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FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 






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**»• 




MRS. MONTAGU 

FROM AN ENGRAVING AFTER THE I'ORTRAIT BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. 



FAMOUS 
BLUE-STOCKINGS 



BY 



ETHEL ROLT WHEELER 



WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MGMX 



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CONTENTS 



Proem : The Age of the Blue-Stockings 

The Blue-Stocking .... 

Mrs Montagu ..... 

Dramatis Person/E of the Bas Bleu 

Mrs Delany ..... 

Precursors and Contemporaries of the Blue 

Stockings ..... 
Mrs Thrale (Piozzi) .... 
Cards and Conversation 
Mrs Vesey ..... 
The Squaring of the Circle 
Mrs Chapone (Hestor Mulso) 
The Blue-Stockings in Pictures 
Fanny Burney (Madame d'Arblay) . 
Blue-Stocking Coteries 

Elizabeth Carter .... 

The Blue-Stockings in the Garden 
Hannah More ..... 
The Blue-Stockings and Feminine Occupations 
Conclusion ..... 
Index ...... 



I 
i6 
28 

63 

78 

105 
117 

143 
157 
178 

189 
210 
222 
246 
263 
286 
299 
320 
332 
341 



r-f- 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Mrs Montagu ..... Frontispiece '-■ 

From an engraving after the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. 

FACING PAGE 

The Nosegay Maccaroni (Lord Villiers) . . 4 t^ 

From the Maccaroni Magazine, 1772, 

Samuel Johnson . . . . . 62 ^ 

From an engraving after the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. 

Mrs Delany . . . . . . 78 ^ 

From the painting by John Opie, R.A , in the National Portrait Gallery. 

Queen Charlotte . . . . . 102 "' 

From the painting by Thomas Gainsborough, R.A., at South Kensington. 

Madame Geoffrin . . . . .110 

From the portrait by Chardin in the Mus^e de Montpellier. Photo : 
Braun, Clement & Co. 

Julie de L'Espinasse . . . . .114 

From a water-colour sketch by Carmontelle in the Mus6e de Chantilly. 

Mrs Thrale . . . . . . 118 - 

From the drawing by George Dance, R. A., in the National Portrait Gallery. 

Thrale Place: afterwards known as Streatham 

Place . . . . . . 124 »- 

From an engraving by Ellis dated 1787. 

Samuel Richardson Reading the Manuscript of 

Sir Charles Grandison to his Friends . 192 ,.. 

After a coloured drawing by Miss Highmore. 



viii FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

FACING PAGE 

The Lady's Last Stake (Mrs Thrale when a young 

girl sat as model for the Lady) . . .214 

After the painting by Hogarth. 

Vauxhall Gardens . . . . .217 

From a caricature by Thomas Rowlandson. 

Miss Burney (Madame d'Arblay) . . .222 

From a portrait by Edward Burney. 

Elizabeth Carter ..... 264 

From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., in the National 
Portrait Gallery. 

Hannah More . . . . . . 299 

From an engraving by A. Halbert after the picture by Opie in 1786. 

Mrs Montagu's House in Portman Square, showing 

Chimney Sweeps dancing before it . . 328 

From the water-colour by T. Hosmer Shepherd in the British Museum. 



FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

PROEM 

THE AGE OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 

TTOW shall we account for the fascination exer- 
-■" -*■ cised by the Eighteenth Century ? Scholars 
recently living moved so familiarly along its ancient 
streets that the present seemed but a phantom 
beside that past reality. Its magnetism still draws us 
— its voices still call : what is the secret of its lure ? 
There are, of course, certain obvious replies. 
The Eighteenth Century is near enough for us to 
understand it ; it has left behind peculiarly intimate 
records, and but few wild flights or puzzling 
speculations disturb its homogeneous life. Its same- 
ness of philosophy, its rigidity of characteristic, 
circumscribe it within a traversable compass, which 
compass is marked out in minute detail. It has, 
furthermore, definite and unmistakable insignia, 
special properties of costume. We can walk the 
streets of Eighteenth-century London, and listen to 
the conversation of its citizens, and visit its pleasure 
gardens, and attend its assemblies with a satisfaction 
afforded by no other age. The people we meet are 
solid flesh and blood ; no misty gaps leave blanks 



2 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

in our reconstruction of the town ; and the talk, 
clear and distinct, flows on without any tantalising 
breaks, without any sudden darts into an impossible 
empyrean. 

But this is only to say that the Eighteenth 
Century is extraordinarily accessible : and we do 
not necessarily wish to pass through a door because 
it happens to be open. We should soon weary of 
peeping in if it were merely the pageant that drew 
us — the mere curiosity of this artificial world of 
powders and patches, with its sedan-chairs swing- 
ing along under the creaking sign-boards, and its 
bewigged and besatined beaux. There must be 
the attraction of deeper, of stronger qualities, if we 
are to be induced across the threshold. 

Such qualities the Eighteenth Century possesses. 
And first we would name the robust, underlying 
vitality of the age — intensity of life, that most 
thrilling of all qualities, which in its higher mani- 
festations makes great thought, great art, great 
literature, and which, even on the lower planes, 
works obscurely towards some nobler end. So the 
vitality of the Eighteenth Century, concerning itself 
chiefly with material things, exhausting itself on 
trifles, and worshipping physical prowess in its 
least admirable forms, yet stimulated the great 
intellectual blossoming of the succeeding era. 

Eighteenth-century England seems to have felt 
an access of new vigour, following after the ex- 
haustion of the civil wars, and quickened by the 



THE AGE OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 3 

military successes on the Continent and by the 
breaking away from French influence. Much of 
this vitaHty was ugly in its effects, because material 
in its manifestations — how ugly, how full of zest is 
shown by the caricatures of Gillray and Rowland- 
son. This is the century of the cult of the prize- 
fighter, of the zenith of cock-fighting, of hard drink- 
ing and hard gaming. Horace Walpole writes 
(1770): "The gaming at Almack's, which has 
taken the pas of White's, is worthy the decline of 
our Empire. The young men of the age lose five, 
ten, fifteen thousand pounds of an evening there." 
And Hannah More relates how, the very first time 
certain magnificent gambling rooms in St James's 
Street were opened, "the enormous sum of sixty 
thousand pounds was lost ! " This is the century 
when " destructive breakfastings " at " Ranelaghs 
of all sorts " were followed by days consumed in 
disorderly riots, until, as Mrs Carter tells us, in 
1752 a bill was introduced into the House to 
restrain the opening of such places until five in the 
afternoon. The superabundant energy of the age 
"exuberated" into all manner of excesses and 
pranks — into a rage for amusement, a mad pursuit 
of that "well-dressed, pale-faced, racketting hag, 
Diversion," into an extravagance of dress which 
equals the amazing fashions of Richard II. 's day. 
The memoirs of the time, and of the Blue- Stock- 
ings in particular, shed many interesting sidelights 
on the prevailing follies. We find Mrs Carter 



4 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

censuring, in 1772, the ''artificial nosegays" worn 
by the ''macaroni gentlemen." She is severe. 
" Such a composition of monkey and demon as at 
one half of the day appears to be studying all the 
tricks of the most trifling and contemptible foppery, 
and in the other is raving and blaspheming at a 
gaming-table, must be an aggregate of all the follies 
and all the crimes that a worthless head and a pro- 
fligate heart can collect from all parts of the globe." 
Mrs Delany and Hannah More inveigh against the 
high head-dresses and other "foolish absurdities." 
Mrs Barbauld writes: "Your waist must be the 
circumference of two oranges, no more. You must 
erect a structure on your head, gradually standing 
to a foot high, exclusive of feathers, and stretching 
to a penthouse of most horrible projection behind, 
the breadth from wing to wing considerably broader 
than your shoulder, and as many different things in 
your cap as in Noah's ark." 

But, as a matter of fact, this extravagance of 
fashion was, like many of the other excesses, 
largely the result of high spirits ; and high spirits 
are consistent with the most sober common-sense. 
It may safely be said that no other century has 
been so distinguished by this admirable if unin- 
spiring quality. Common-sense in every depart- 
ment of life — common-sense in marriage, common- 
sense in religion — this was the ideal aimed at and 
generally achieved. Now though it must be con- 
fessed that a surfeit of common -sense may be rather 




m 












THE NOSEGAY MACCAROXI 

(lord villiers) 

from the maccaroni magazine, 1772 



THE AGE OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 5 

a stodgy diet, yet after some of the bubble-susten- 
ance of the present era, it has a wholesome and 
grateful taste. The sound common-sense of the 
Eighteenth Century undoubtedly appeals strongly 
to us in certain moods. We who have supped on 
wild honey and strange berries, and even, it may 
be, on heaven-sent manna, yet return gladly at 
times to the homely rice-pudding, on which 
nourishment the Eighteenth Century thrived. It 
is eminently soothing to pass for a while into 
this " whatever is, is right " atmosphere ; to be 
in the company of people who are thoroughly 
satisfied with life as it is ; people practical and 
kindly, often witty and sometimes wise ; people 
undisturbed by dark gusts of passion, by riotous 
imaginings, by aching aspirations ; people inimical 
to emotion of every sort, since emotion is fatal to 
the goddess whom they serve, the goddess of 
common-sense. 

Common-sense divorces love from marriage, and 
spirituality from religion. In a century dominated 
by common-sense, marriage is a question of cal- 
culation, and religion a question of morals. Now 
morals can be treated of as effectively by the 
layman as by the cleric ; and as the clergy were 
indifferent and corrupt, the task of preaching was 
undertaken con amore by the majority of the writers 
of the time. Never was so didactic a period of litera- 
ture ! With Addison, a gentle chider of manners 
and morals, and Swift, flaying the age with the 



.'^ 



6 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

scalpel of his unsparing satire at the beginning of 
the century, and Hannah More at the end, writing 
her Strictures on the Manners of the Great ; 
and in the middle the heroic figure of Dr Johnson 
— heroic in spite of all its blemishes and peculiari- 
ties — castigating contemporary vices and follies, 
and leaving behind him in his Prayers and 
Meditations^ the record of a soul, pious and 
sincere, struggling ceaselessly to fulfil the very 
practical duties that life laid upon him. Even 
Wesley and Whitfield combated Sin rather than 
Scepticism, and dwelt on the moral rather than on 
the spiritual side of religion. The Blue-Stockings, 
too, generally speaking, advocated and practised 
the doctrine of Salvation by Works. And so to 
this age belong various experiments in philanthropy 
— the Foundling Hospital opened in 1741, Sunday 
schools and infant schools established later in the 
century, records of charitable institutions and private 
charity — above all, under the last head, the record 
of what Macaulay so unforgivably calls Dr John- 
son's ** menagerie " — composed of those blind and 
unhappy and outcast creatures with whom Dr 
Johnson shared his home, giving them, not merely a 
roof, but respect and affection, and bearing uncom- 
plainingly with their temper and their ingratitude. 

Thus the Eighteenth Century has a call for the 
heart as well. Humanity beat strong under all its 
frippery, and it possessed something of that larger 
tolerance, that deeper pity, that wider benevolence, 



THE AGE OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 7 

which are stimulated only by an effort to relieve 
the sufferings and ignorance of others. 

And yet as vitality without ideality led to the 
Spleen, the Vapours, the Hyp — those vague 
Eighteenth Century complaints which fill so large 
a portion of the memoirs : so religion without 
spirituality induced in some temperaments a gloom 
so profound that it tended to madness. We think 
of Johnson himself, and his periods of darkness ; 
we think of Cowper's grave '' where happy saints 
may weep amid their praying." Are we to put 
down the melancholy of the devout in this century 
solely to disease ? Is it not possible to suppose 
that the spirit, prisoned in too rigid barriers, pined 
for a larger and more radiant air.'^ In order to be 
sane, it is true, we must keep warm touch with 
humanity ; but there are some natures that cannot 
be sane unless they touch the stars as well. 

We have next to inquire why this particular 
century, whose fascination we have been en- 
deavouring to analyse, was chosen to witness the 
birth of the Blue-Stockings, and to see for a brief 
period, the Salon established in England. We 
have suggested that the Eighteenth Century was a 
vital century, a human century in all senses of the 
word, its distinguishing quality of common-sense, 
which made it practical, didactic, satisfied, — blossom- 
ing on rare occasions into the surpassing flower of 
wisdom. Animation, sympathy, delight in one's 
immediate surroundings — these are the essence of 



8 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

social life. Moreover, the Eighteenth Century was 
a time of leisure, of prosperity, of expansion, a 
time when the middle class was slowly building 
itself up into a solid force. By 1750 the mon- 
archical struggles that had rent England in twain 
were settled once and for all, and Sir Robert 
Walpole had assured to the nation, by hook or by 
crook, a quarter of a century of peace. Leisure 
gave opportunity for the cutting and polishing of 
personality ; prosperity allowed scope for the setting 
of the gem in brilliant entertainment. The cult of 
self terminated, on the one hand, in the Beau, on 
the other, in the Wit — both social types, and both 
types peculiar to this stage of our history ; and in 
the evolution of the Wit, conversation became an 
art, and correspondence, literature. A shrewd 
criticism of life, a clever criticism of books, were 
the points whence talkers started quarry for their 
arrows. There was a complete absence of intense 
preoccupation, which drives the mind back upon 
itself; there was no glamour of love or of nature 
or of religion, to mesmerise and make solitary ; 
the ease and lightness of social intercourse had 
never to be broken by abysses of too serious or 
too profound speculation. Under these favourable 
conditions the Salon came to its fruition, and 
Conversation was enthroned Goddess of Society. 
In innumerable memoirs and volumes of corre- 
spondence the carefully cultivated self of the Blue- 
Stockings lies prisoned in an intricacy of words. 



THE AGE OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 9 

If we have the patience to plunge into these 
volumes, and to remain almost passive in their 
depths, the aroma of personality slowly frees itself, 
and through the leisured self-revelations of the 
writers themselves, and through the leisured por- 
traits of them by their friends, we get very near 
the springs of being. This essence has, of course, 
to be enmeshed in a cage of facts, or it will 
evaporate altogether ; and it is hard to make a 
framework frail and yet secure enough to contain 
the wit of Mrs Montagu, the charm of Mrs 
Delany, the sympathy of Mrs Carter, the sensi- 
tiveness of Fanny Burney, the " uncommon good 
sense" of Mrs Chapone, the "sylphery" of Mrs 
Vesey, the vivacity of Mrs Thrale, and the noble 
energy of Hannah More. The epigram must lack 
the flash of living eye that gave it point ; the 
sensitiveness must want the delicate blush that 
lent it living bloom. But these women were so 
much alive that the imagination, though it misses 
the final details of portraiture, can at least see 
them sweeping by in the robes they wore, brushing 
with their skirts most of the great figures of the 
time. The swish of their satins and silks made a 
considerable noise in the ears of their contemporaries, 
and the age has generally been acclaimed one of 
extraordinary women. 

In proof whereof, let us take the general 
testimony of certain representative men — of Burke, 
of Dr Johnson, of Dr Burney, of Horace Walpole. 



10 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Burke, writing to Fanny Burney, in praise of 
Cecilia, says, ''In an age distinguished by pro- 
ducing extraordinary women, I hardly dare to tell 
you where my opinion would place you amongst 
them." Horace Walpole would have Hannah 
More admitted into that Fifteenth Century Para- 
dise of Ladies — the ''Cite des Dames." Dr 
Johnson, having dined at Mrs Garrick's in the 
society of Mrs Carter, Hannah More and Miss 
Fanny Burney, exclaimed, " Three such women 
are not to be found ; I know not where I could 
find a fourth, except Mrs Lenox, who is superior 
to them all."i Boswell : "Might not Mrs Mon- 
tagu have been a fourth?" Johnson: "Sir, Mrs 
Montagu does not make a trade of her wit ; but Mrs 
Montagu is a very extraordinary woman ; she has 
a constant stream of conversation, and it is always 
impregnated ; it has always meaning." Then 
there are those verses that appeared in the Herald 
newspaper, almost certainly the composition of Dr 
Burney. The writer begins by affirming that it is 
women's fame, and not w^omen's shame that should 
be proclaimed : and he proceeds to name the 
illustrious women of the time. The verses are 
doggerel, but the criticism is not inapt : 

" Hannah More's pathetic pen 
Painting high th' impassioned scene ; 

^ Her best remembered work is the "Female Quixote," describing 
the adventures of a young lady who sees the marvellous and romantic 
in every encounter. Dr Johnson seems to have been one of the few 
in his appreciation of Mrs Lenox's talents and virtues. 



THE AGE OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 11 

Carter's piety and learning, 
Little Burney's quick discerning ; 
Cowley's neatly pointed wit 
Healing those her satires hit ; 
Smiling Streatfield's iv'ry neck, 
Nose and notions — a la Grecque ! 
Let Chapone retain a place. 
And the mother of her Grace 
Each art of conversation knowing 
High-bred, eloquent Boscawen ; 
Thrale, in whose expressive eyes 
Sits a soul above disguise, 
Skilled with wit and sense t' impart 
Feelings of a generous heart. 
Lucan, Leveson, Greville, Crewe ; 
Fertile-minded Montague, 
Who makes each rising wit her care 
And brings her knowledge from afar ! 
Whilst her tuneful tongue defends 
Authors dead and absent friends ; 
Bright in genius, pure in fame, 
Herald, haste, and these proclaim ! " 

The roll of names has been quoted in full, and 
of these, eight at least have survived to this day 
as distinct personalities ; six are studied separately 
in the following pages, and we shall have occasion 
to refer again to most of the other ladies named. 

If we are to follow Mrs Chapone's method, and 
memorise our subject by appropriate adjectives — 
(Egypt, the nurse and parent of arts and super- 
stitions ; Persia, shocking despotism and perpetual 
revolutions ; Ancient Greece, freedom and genius ; 
Scythia, hardiness and conquest^ — we shall find 



^■T 



12 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

characteristics more distinctive Implied in the 
female administration planned out by Dr Johnson. 
Our Blue-Stockings are to hold the following 
places : — 

Carter — for Archbishop of Canterbury ; 
Montagu — First Lord of the Treasury ; 
Mrs Chapone — Preceptor to the Princes ; 
Hannah More — Poet Laureate. . . . 

" ' And no place for me ? ' cried Mrs Thrale. 

'* ' No, no/ replied Dr Johnson, * you will get 
into Parliament by your little silver tongue, and 
then rise by your own merit' 

"'And what shall I do?' exclaimed Fanny 
Burney. 

*' * Oh, we will send you for a spy, and perhaps 
you will be hanged ! ' rejoined the Doctor, with a 
loud laugh that a French writer has compared to 
that of a rhinoceros." 

The consideration in which women were held is 
also evidenced by that scheme for a paper to be 
conducted entirely by women, the Feminiad, anti- 
cipating by over a century the idea of La Fronde. 
But it took shape only in the fertile brain of 
Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Maria Edgeworth's 
father, and never reached fruition. 

Thus, as a testimony to the merit of the Blue- 
Stockings and the importance of the movement, 
we have the sincere admiration of Burke, the 
half-mischievous homage of Johnson, the cultured 



THE AGE OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 13 

allusions of Horace Walpole, and the ready 
courtesy of Dr Burney. There are many other 
tributes besides. Further testimony of the notice 
that the Blue-Stocking excited is afforded by the 
cognomens she was given, frequently of classic 
origin. We have Montagu Minerva, the Queen 
of the Blues, the Maecenas of Hill Street ; 
Streatham's Hebe, Mrs Thrale, the dispenser of 
Ambrosia to Johnson ; Sappho, the appellation 
bestowed by Lord Lyttleton on Mrs Carter ; 
anyone more unlike Sappho it is impossible to 
conceive. "Pretty Fanny" is Dr Johnson's name 
for Fanny Burney, and " Saint Hannah " Horace 
Walpole's name for Hannah More. Among her 
friends Mrs Vesey is universally known as '' The 
Sylph." Testimonials these, however fantastic, 
however exaggerated, however tinged with ridicule, 
to Intellect, to Grace, to Beauty, to Goodness : 
and in some cases, to a genuine friendship that 
had very little admixture of gallantry. Indeed, 
the sincerity of its friendships is another quality 
by which the Eighteenth Century wins us ; friend- 
ships principally between men and men in the 
first half, and principally between women and 
women in the second half, of which latter friend- 
ships these pages will afford much evidence. 

The Blue-Stockings we have chosen to study 
were all probably acquainted with one another. A 
newspaper paragraph of 1781 — a little incorrect, as 
newspaper paragraphs were even apt to be then — 



14 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

states that ** Miss Burney, the sprightly writer of 
the elegant novel Evelina, is now domesticated with 
Mrs Thrale in the same manner that Miss More 
is with Mrs Garrick, and Mrs Carter with Mrs 
Montagu." But the ladies so coupled, though not 
permanently living under one roof, were bound by 
ties of intimacy and affection. Mrs Carter, whose 
attachments were strong and lasting, was also the 
friend of Mrs Chapone and of Mrs Vesey : while 
Mrs Vesey and Hannah More were linked in 
tender association. Mrs Delany, who belongs to 
an older generation, knew Mrs Montagu well, 
and was thrown into familiar contact with Fanny 

Burney. 

Into the circle of these ladies' lives many other 
illustrious personages pass, besides Johnson and 
Burke and Horace Walpole. The tragic figure 
of Dean Swift briefly crosses our sight; Garrick 
appears, in his gayest and most kindly mood ; 
Wesley, writing ardent epistles that contain un- 
conscious admiration for his correspondent; Cowper 
with his graceful verses immortalising Mrs Mon- 
tagu's feather-hangings. The painters are here, 
too. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Hogarth: George HI. 
and Queen Charlotte are present for a space of 
time on the stage. Outside events find only a 
faint echo in these annals : thus the Rebellion of 
'45 gives Mrs Montagu's husband the opportunity 
of saying that he discovers in her the spirit of a 
Roman lady ; Mrs Thrale's house in the Borough 



THE AGE OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 15 

is threatened during the Gordon Riots ; and the 
French Revolution favours the marriage of Fanny 
Burney by impelling the Emigres to England. 
But indeed, it is not on the political but on the 
social side that the record left by the Blue-Stockings 
is so rich : we may learn in minute detail the life 
of the times, find out what people thought, what 
they talked of, what they wrote of ; discover 
how they passed the day, surprise their occupa- 
tions, their amusements, the hours of their meals, 
and of what these meals consisted : and all the 
while be in the company, sometimes delightful, 
sometimes soothing, but always pleasant, of women 
distinguished In their own age, the vigour of 
whose personality has survived down to the 
present day. 



THE BLUE-STOCKING 

WORDS have histories as well as nations and 
individuals. Some are born to greatness, 
some achieve greatness, and some have greatness 
thrust upon them. Some put off their purple for 
beggar's robes, or linger in the intermediate stage 
of the suburban drawing-room. The history of 
the word Blue-Stocking happens to be one of con- 
siderable interest, and contains elements of both 
tragedy and farce. It has been acclaimed with 
homage ; it has been pelted with ridicule. As we 
think upon its varying fortune, its life-history 
shapes itself before our eyes ; and personifying the 
word Blue-Stockings we see it pass through the 
stages of its career in a kind of vision. 

Out of a misty origin the word Blue-Stocking 
emerged about the year 1756 luminous, aristocratic, 
two-sexed : It bore the light of learning, and this 
was enshrined in a crystal lamp of wit which threw 
forth radiance on every hand. Wit was the medium 
through which its learning played — wit, which is 
a social quality, and which creates social centres. 
So the word Blue-Stocking walked freely abroad 
with lively step, debonair, self-confident, attracting 
by Its effulgence other wandering lights until all 

over London there were little corruscations of 

16 



THE BLUESTOCKING 17 

brilliance. Such was the word Blue-Stocking in 
the days of Its glorious youth ; a force at once 
social and intellectual, not solitary but gregarious ; 
studious largely with the object of shining in inter- 
course, and as happy burning the midnight oil of 
the closet as the waxlights of festivity. But evil 
was to befal this fantastic word which we are 
embodying for the moment as a personality. First 
the lamp of crystal cracked a little, and the light 
of learning burned a trifle smoky. So early as 
1 78 1 It glimpsed the enemy that was to bring 
about the eclipse of all Its glories, for in that year 
the first shadow of another word, Pedantry, threw 
a dimness over Its robes — Pedantry, which divorces 
Wit from Learning, which divorces Humour from 
Learning, and when Wit and Humour are gone . 
Vanity, Opiniation, Egoism take their place. At 
the first hint of this ominous accusation some of 
the more sensitive votaries of the word Blue- 
Stocking took alarm, and fled incontinent ; and the 
mockers who had been kept at a distance by Its 
dazzle now drew hesitatingly forward, with sly jests 
at the cracked globe and the dimming flame. As 
the shadow of the word Pedantry darkened, and 
the crowd pressed closer, the fear of ridicule grew 
on the unfortunate Blue- Stocking, and at last, at 
the end of the century, It fled from the haunts 
of gay society and sought unfrequented ways. Soli- 
tary, outcast, shunned by the world and shunning 
the world, the word Blue-Stocking underwent a 



18 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

period of cruel exile. The briers tore off Its 
jewelled singing-robes, a harsh wind blew through 
the tattered garments, and Its hair grew longer 
and longer, as the word became more and more 
identified with the image of woman. Then the 
crystal lamp of wit split suddenly in two, leav- 
ing the flame of learning burning bright but 
unprotected in an uncongenial air. The word 
Blue-Stocking, that had sought the wilds as a 
hermaphroditic It, two-sexed, emerged, one-sexed, 
a She, the radiance, the beauty, the charm of 
personality, lost under the blackness of that dire 
reproach of Pedantry. Out of the wreck of the 
sparkling and embroidered past She has saved but 
one possession — a possession that was little more 
than an accessory then, but which is now her 
only treasure — the possession of learning. Next 
comes the time when the Blue-Stocking accepts 
the changed conditions ; she binds up her hair 
neatly and plainly ; indifferent to the graces of 
dress, her only object is to make the useful and 
the sensible subserve the higher preoccupations ; 
indifferent to the opinion of the world, she pursues 
her studies in the quiet of her own chamber. 
Who can prophesy her future adventures.-^ Her 
neatness may wear into shabbiness, and her shabbi- 
ness decline into hopeless poverty : or there may 
be yet a great destiny before her — an emergence 
into a new splendour, intellectual or social. Her 
future is mere speculation. 



THE BLUE-STOCKING 19 

But her past as described above is no mythical 
history ; it can be attested in most of its particulars 
by documentary evidence. These documents we 
proceed to cite. 

The birth of the word Blue- Stocking is wrapped, 
as we have aleady hinted, in obscurity. Before its 
advent the term ** Wit " was used to connote that 
combination of intellectual and social qualities after- 
wards embraced by Blue- Stocking. Fanny Burney, 
for instance, speaks at different times of Mrs 
Delany, of Soame Jenyns and others as belonging 
to the *'old wits," The Eighteenth Century had a 
useful word for *^ Wit " used in a derogatory sense 
— ''Witling" — he who carried his wit to excess, to 
absurdity. The witling has little weight, and is 
reckless in his shooting. " People of real merit 
and sense hate to converse with witlings," says 
Mrs Montagu, '*as rich merchant ships dread to 
engage privateers, they may receive damage, and 
can get nothing but dry blows." It appears from 
the same lady that the witlings had several affecta- 
tions in common with the Prdcieuses Ridicules. 
She writes in 1 754 : '* Mr Godschall's house is 
generally full of poetic misses, who are addressing 
each other by the names of Parthenia, Araminta, 
etc., with now and then a little epistle to Strephon 
or Damon. I was uneasy when they were at home, 
for fear they should enter into the precieuse char- 
acter of Mrs Godschall. " These affectations inspired 
an English play, The Witlings^ written, curiously 



20 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

enough, by one unacquainted with MoHere's 
Femmes Savantes. This comedy of Fanny 
Burneys belongs to the year 1779; condemned 
by Dr Burney, and by the Burney mentor, Mr 
Crisp of Chessington, it never saw the light, and 
no copy of it now exists. " The fatal knell, then, 
is tolled, and ' down among the dead men ' sink 
the poor Witlings'' writes Fanny Burney. We 
are inclined to resent the summary shipwreck of 
this play, which, even if unworthy to sail the high 
seas of literature, might have afforded some valuable 
treasure-trove for this and cognate studies. Both 
critics seem to have been far too much concerned 
with the possible effect of failure on the sensitive- 
ness of the author. The only salvage consists in 
these few lines of Fanny Burney's : ** So good- 
night, Mr Dabbler ! Good-night, Lady Smatter, 
Mrs Sapient, Mrs Voluble, Mrs Wheedle, Censor, 
Cecilia Beaufort, and you, you great oaf, Bobby ! " ^ 

"Wit" and '' Witling '* were a convenient pair 
of words; it is unfortunate that ''Blue-Stocking" 
had to serve indifferently as a synonym for either. 

Now we have to try and explain the extra- 
ordinary application of the word Blue-Stocking, to 
a certain set of wits and to a certain intellectual 
and social movement. 

1 This system of nomenclature, deriving from allegory, was very 
popular in Restoration and subsequent comedy. Congreve, in The 
Double Dealer^ has Foresight and Scandal and Tattle and Lady 
Ply ant. We all remember Croker in The Good- Natured Man, and Sir 
Benjamin Backbite and Lady Sneerwell in The School for Scandal. 






THE BLUE-STOCKING 21 

Blue stocking, worsted, implies morning dress, 
unconventionallty, as opposed to black-stocking, 
silken hose, evening dress, ceremony. On this point, 
at least, almost all contemporary evidence is agreed. 
But considerable conflict prevails as to who was 
the originator of the mot, and who the wearer of the 
historical blue stockings. The most popular version 
connects the inception of the word with the grand- 
son of Bishop Stillingfleet — one Benjamin Stilling- 
fleet — a botanist of note, an athlete who had in his 
youth made the ascent of Mont Blanc, a poet, a 
philosopher. " His dress was remarkably grave," 
says Boswell, " and in particular it was observed 
that he wore blue stockings." Boswell, indeed, is 
the most ardent adherent of the Stillingfleet 
derivation ; he makes Stillingfleet's intellectual 
attainments give importance to the mere accident 
of his dress. '' Such was the excellence of his 
conversation, that his absence was felt as so great 
a loss, that it used to be said, ' We can do nothing 
without the blue stockings', and thus by degrees the 
title was established." Sir William Forbes, in his 
Life of Beattie, supports this view. 

As to the invention of the mot^ it is ascribed 
more particularly to Mrs Montagu or one of her 
circle, and to Mrs Vesey. The first mention of 
the word ** Blue-Stocking" occurs in the year 1756, 
when Stillingfleet was staying at Mrs Montagu's 
country house, Sandleford. A friend, writing jest- 
ingly to Mrs Montagu, says : '' Monsey swears he 



22 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

will make out some story of you and him before 
you are much older ; you shall not keep blew stock- 
ings at Sandleford for nothing." Dr Monsey was 
an admirer of Mrs Montagu's. To him she writes, 
1757 : " I assure you our philosopher (Stillingfleet) 
is so much a man of pleasure, he has left off his old 
friends and his blue stockings and is at operas and 
gay assemblies every night." The connection 
between Blue-Stocking and Philosophy is here 
closely indicated. Madame d'Arblay attributes the 
saying to the ''well-known, yet always original, 
simplicity" of Mrs Vesey. ''Don't mind dress. 
Come in your blue stockings," she is reported to 
have remarked to Stillingfleet. 

Mrs Carter's nephew and biographer refuses to 
accept the Stillingfleet origin on the ground that 
Stillingfleet died in 1771, long before the assemblies 
assumed the Blue-Stocking designation. He sub- 
stitutes "the mistake of a distinguished foreigner," 
who was told that dress was so little regarded at 
these functions that he might come in his blue 
stockings. This, we are informed, was Mrs 
Carter's own explanation of the matter ; more 
important, it is the one put forward by Hannah 
More, the historian of the movement, in the 
advertisement to her poem Bas Bleu. This poem 
was not published till 1786, but it was handed 
about in manuscript many years before. 

Another version ascribes the derivation to a 
different source. Madame de Polignac, one of the 



THE BLUE-STOCKING 23 

leaders of French Society, following the fashion in 
Paris at the time, appeared at Mrs Montagu's 
assembly wearing blue stockings, and, according to 
this account, her example was eagerly followed by 
English ladies of importance. Although Lady 
Crewe, herself a " Blue-Stockinger," offers this ex- 
planation, and although we feel that a feminine 
origin is more appropriate to the term than a 
masculine one, yet this view has not sufficient 
ground to support it against the evidence already 
quoted. When all is said, we have to admit 
that the Blue-Stockings of the worthy Benjamin 
Stillingfleet remain the heraldic badge of those 
assemblies, at which, according to the very mas- 
culine account of Mr Boswell, " the fair sex 
might participate in conversation with literary and 
ingenious men, animated by a desire to please." 

The Blue-Stocking, then, is now born, a member 
of intellectual and indeed of fashionable society, 
from the very first belying its implication of morn- 
ing dress. Stillingfleet's blue stockings seem to 
have been the single exception in a coterie charac- 
terised by silk stockings and diamonds ; and that 
this exception should have imposed the name, has 
been a source of considerable confusion. 

The term was at first used indifferently for men 
or women — " We can do nothing without the blue 
stockings," says Boswell, meaning Stillingfleet. 
Hannah More, too, writes in 1788 of Dr Blagdon : 
** A new blue stocking and a very agreeable one " : 



24 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

and both men and women compose the dramatis 
personae of the Bas Bleu. The very fact that the 
word was so equivocal in origin and so misleading in 
meaning, made it appropriate to the pun, the conceit, 
the quip, the crank. Mrs Chapone writes to Miss 
Burney : "If you will give me your company next 
Thursday evening, you will meet Pepys, Boscawen, 
etc., so you may put on your blue stockings," — i.e. 
come prepared for intellectual conversation. All 
kinds of tricks, both grammatical and fantastical, 
were played upon the word blue, signifying 
lear^ied. Fanny Burney writes of "a whole 
tribe of blues with Mrs Montagu at their 
head " ; she invents this "■ epithet of blueism." 
Hannah More speaks of there being at a party 
"everything delectable in the blue way," and Bos- 
well tells us that the lively Miss Monckton "used 
to have the finest bit of blue at the house of her 
mother, Lady Galway." Mrs Piozzi gives a new 
turn to the phrase in 1789, when smarting under 
the persecution she had received on account of her 
marriage: "Charming Blues! blue with venom, I 
think ..." But, as was perhaps to be expected, 
the most ingenious conceits come from the pen of 
Horace Walpole. The connoisseur writes in these 
words describing a Blue-Stocking meeting *'in 
imitation of Mrs Vesey's Babels : " " It was so 
blue, it was quite mazarin blue." Not only blue, 
but stockings suggests to him an image. Writing 
to Hannah More in 1784, he says: " When will 



THE BLUESTOCKING 25 

you blue-stocking yourself, and come amongst us ? 
Consider how many of us are veterans ; and 
though we do not trudge on foot according to the 
institution, we may be out at heels — and the heel, 
you know, Madam, has never been privileged." 

The first connection of Pedantry with Blue- 
Stocking occurs in 1781. Mrs Thrale writes in 
her diary Thraliana \ "We met the Smelts, the 
Ords, and numberless blues there (at Webber's 
drawings of the South Sea rarities), and displayed 
our pedantry at our pleasure." She has taken no 
alarm yet; but Horace Walpole, writing in 1788, 
is aware that there are mockers abroad. " For 
me, though I am numbered among the blue stock- 
ings, my stockings are so very thin, that not a 
thread aches at the laugh at them." In the very 
same year the more sensitive Fanny Burney begins 
to shiver at the cold wind of criticism. To some 
extent at least, the word Blue-Stocking had now 
become synonymous with Pedant : and Fanny 
Burney, once proud of the name — '' Who would 
not be a blue-stockinger at this rate?" (1780) — in 
1788 emphatically disowns it : "I am always ready 
enough to enter into any precaution to save that 
pedantic charge." 

Thus the Blue-Stocking, whose birth is recorded 
in 1756, felt in 1788 the first shadow of her doom. 
We intend to confine ourselves to the history of 
the Blue-Stocking in her youth and her prime, the 
Blue-Stocking who, because of her intellectual and 



26 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

social gifts, or because of her literary achievements, 
was a hostess or a member of the Blue-Stocking 
coteries. Our objective is, therefore, the latter half 
of the Eighteenth Century, concentrating in the 
years between 1770 and 1785. We shall follow 
the modern usage of the word Blue- Stocking and 
devote our attention principally to the women of 
the movement. 

There are three famous Blue-Stocking hostesses 
to study, Mrs Montagu, Mrs Thrale, and Mrs 
Vesey. Certain contemporary.records give to other 
ladies an equal eminence. Hannah More, for in- 
stance, substitutes the Hon. Mrs Boscawen for 
Mrs Thrale as wearer of the triple crown — a judg- 
ment which Boswell would have eagerly endorsed. 
Instead of Mrs Boscawen, Wraxall puts Mrs Ord. 
But generally speaking, Mrs Montagu, Mrs Vesey, 
and Mrs Thrale are the accepted leaders of the 
movement. Mrs Montagu was acclaimed by Dr 
Johnson, "Queen of the Blues," and her parties 
were generally allowed to eclipse all other lights. 
To frequent them "was to drink at the fountain- 
head," says Lady Louisa Stuart. Mrs Thrale, 
according to Fanny Burney, had long been set up 
as a rival candidate to Mrs Montagu for colloquial 
eminence, and each of them thought the other 
alone worthy to be her peer. As to Mrs Vesey, 
the third famous hostess, "she dreamed not of any 
competition " ; but to her Hannah More dedicated 
her poem the Bas Bleu, thus assigning to her 



THE BLUE-STOCKING 27 

the first place. By means of this poem, and 
other contemporary verse and prose, we have 
chosen for examination the Hves of some of 
the most famous guests and friends of these 
hostesses — women distinguished in various walks 
in life, and particularly in literature, education, and 
philanthropy : Mrs Hannah More/ whose least 
claim is to be the chronicler of the movement ; 
Mrs Elizabeth Carter, the translator of Epictetus ; 
Mrs Chapone, author of Letters on the Improve- 
me7it of the Mind\ Fanny Burney, the creator of 
Evelina ; and Mrs Delany, the friend of Swift, who, 
though born in 1700, lived to see the birth, the 
brilliance, and the decline of the Blue-Stocking 
assembles. 

The title Mrs\v2,'~, universally adopted by unmarried ladies in this 
centur}' when they reached middle life. Mrs More and Mrs Carter 
were unmarried. 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800). 

" "DEAUTY, Wit, Wisdom, Learning, and Virtue 
-'-^ united (to say nothing of Wealth)." So 
runs the grandiloquent tribute paid by Lord Lyttle- 
ton to Mrs Montaofu. 

These terms evince the extravagance of an 
admirer ; but contemporary records fall little short 
of them in enthusiasm. Dr Johnson, before his 
quarrel with Mrs Montagu, calls her *' Minerva 
cast in Virtue's mould." ''She is not only the 
finest genius, but the finest lady I ever saw," 
writes Hannah More. The Earl of Bath said she 
was the most perfect being created — an opinion 
endorsed by Edmund Burke. To her virtue, to 
her wit, to her wealth, there is universal testimony. 
But in learning she was inferior to Mrs Carter ; in 
social gifts, " the art of kneading the mass well 
together," to Mrs Vesey ; in charm to Mrs Delany. 
By what qualities did she obtain her undisputed 
position as "Queen of the Blues" — how did she 
manage to capture so securely the imagination of 
her time ? 

It is not enough to be a lady of excellent 
capacities ; in order to achieve a wide renown, 
these must have effective display. Two traits in 
Mrs Montagu's character contributed to this end ; 

9S 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 29 

her tireless vivacity, which kept her intellectual 
gifts continually flashing before men's eyes, and 
her love of magnificence, which provided a stately 
setting for her personality. Her extreme restless- 
ness of mind and body earned her in early years 
the nickname of "Fidget"; her nervous energy 
preyed upon her physical frame, so that in later 
life she became not only Mrs Montagu ''the witty," 
but Mrs Montagu '' the lean." Yet despite this 
excessive liveliness, the quintessence of her person- 
ality as distilled from the memoirs, is distinction ; 
which, combined wuth wit, gives a rare and impres- 
sive charm. A large fortune sustained her love 
of magnificence. She moves across spacious and 
arresting backgrounds — the furniture, the decora- 
tion of the rooms in which she entertained have 
come down to us in ample description, and the 
fine house she built for herself still stands in Port- 
man Square (No. 22). Those who did not share 
in her lavish hospitality were struck by her pictur- 
esque charities ; every Mayday she gave a feast 
to the boy chimney-sweepers on the lawn in front 
of her town house. Of these annual feasts we shall 
speak in more detail later on. 

Mrs Montagu's Wit, Mrs Montagu's Wealth — 
these were the two undisputed possessions which 
enabled her to assume the rank of '' Queen of the 
Blues." 

Lord Lyttleton, in his eulogium, has shown us 
the fair side of the medal — though there are other 



30 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

qualities that might be engraven upon it — benevo- 
lence, and constancy in friendship ; but the medal 
has a reverse. However, its worst feature, perhaps, 
is vanity — a love of display, a desire to shine, a 
willingness to accept flattery. When we consider 
Mrs Montagu's upbringing and career, it seems 
that such defect in character was almost inevitable. 

Mrs Montagu's early training, as well as her 
natural disposition, fitted her for the position she 
was afterwards to enjoy as acknowledged leader 
of cultivated society. From her very babyhood 
her intellect was unnaturally stimulated by the 
admiration of parents and relatives, and her own 
ardour of nature made her only too eager to excel. 
Her childhood and girlhood held in germ, and even 
in flower, the qualities that were to give her fame 
later on among her contemporaries. 

Elizabeth Robinson (afterwards Mrs Montagu) 
was born in 1720 at York. Her father had estates 
in Yorkshire, and when Elizabeth was seven her 
mother inherited the property of Coveney, in Cam- 
bridgeshire, and of Mount Morris, near Hythe. The 
family moved first to Cambridgeshire, and then to 
Kent, where most of Elizabeth's early life was spent. 

She was a child of uncommon sensibility and 
acuteness of understanding, as well as of great 
beauty. When she was at Cambridge, Dr Middle- 
ton, the author of the Life of Cicero, who was her 
grandmother s second husband, " was in the habit 
of requiring from her an account of the learned 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 31 

conversations, at which in his society, she was 
frequently present." Her father was proud of the 
distinguished notice she excited, and endeavoured 
in every way to stimulate her quickness. He him- 
self was a man of social disposition, of excellent 
conversational powers, and of great artistic gifts 
— indeed we are told that he excelled most of the 
professed artists of his day in landscape. Married 
at the age of eighteen, he felt himself obliged, in 
the interests of his twelve children, to spend most 
of his time in the country. And there he was 
constantly afflicted with the Hyp, which may 
be regarded, in some sense, as the Eighteenth 
Century designation for boredom. When the 
dulness became unbearable, he would burst into 
invective, or order Elizabeth to put a double 
quantity of saffron in his tea — saffron being a 
specific against low spirits. The tedium of exist- 
ence, as well as pride in his daughter's powers, led 
Mr Robinson to encourage her vivacity in every 
way. 

In her girlhood she had a large capacity for 
enjoyment, and the frequent visits to Bath, to 
Tunbridge Wells, to London, together with the 
entertainments provided by the countryside, quite 
satisfied her desires. She was as fond of dancing 
as if a " tarantula had bit her," and we read of 
balls, of expeditions to towns eight miles off to see 
a play, supper at the inn afterwards, and coach 
overturns on the way home — all described with 



32 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

exceeding zest In letters to her friend, afterwards 
Duchess of Portland. Elizabeth had become 
acquainted with this friend, Lady Margaret 
Cavendish Harley, six years her senior, on her 
visits to Cambridge, " noble, lovely little Peggy," 
as Matthew Prior had once called her. 

" My noble, lovely little Peggy, 
Let this my First Epistle, beg ye 
At dawn of morn and close of even 
To lift your heart and hands to heaven." 

Lady Margaret married the Duke of Portland in 
1734, and Elizabeth remained her lifelong friend. 
The friendship of the Duchess of Portland with 
Mrs Delany was even more intimate. 

These early letters of Elizabeth Robinson are 
remarkable. They display an unusual degree of 
observation, and are vivid with fertility of fancy. 
When she was only twelve years old she wrote in 
this style : '' This Cambridge is the dullest place, 
it neither affords anything entertaining or ridiculous 
enough to put into a letter. Were it half so difficult 
to find something to say as something to write, 
what a melancholy set of people should we be who 
love prating ! " 

At fourteen her imagination took wing, so that 
we find her, with reference to a letter that a 
footman had forgotten to post, expressing herself 
thus : — 

"If my letter were sensible, what would be its 
mortification, that, instead of having the honour 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 33 

to kiss your Grace's hand, it must lie confined in 
the footman's pocket, with greasy gloves, rotten 
apples, mouldy nuts, a pack of dirty cards, and 
the only companion of its sort, a tender epistle 
from his sweetheart * tru till Deth.' " 

Of her pen she writes in 1739 : — 

"It has given flight to as much foolishness as 
when it was in the wing of a goose, but it sings 
its last so melodiously one would imagine it was 
taken from a swan." 

These extracts are culled almost at hazard. 

In her youth her appearance is thus described : 
she had brown hair and blue eyes of peculiar 
animation and expression, with dark high-arched 
eyebrows, and a brilliant complexion. She was of 
the middle stature and stooped a little, says her 
nephew, ''which gave an air of modesty to her 
countenance, in which the features were otherwise 
so strongly marked as to express an elevation of 
sentiment befitting the most exalted condition." 
Her brother Matthew, who was seven years older 
than herself, after praising her delightfulness in 
company, speaks with even greater esteem of her 
powers of study and thought, and adds that except 
the tribe of her lovers, she has no more assured 
admirer of her person and her accomplishments. 

In 1742, at the age of twenty-two, Elizabeth 

married Edward Montagu, cousin of that Edward 

Wortley Montagu who had for wife the lively 

Lady Mary. Edward Montagu was twenty-nine 

3 



34 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

years older than his wife. He was a gentleman 
of Yorkshire, possessed of great wealth, Member 
of Parliament for Huntingdon, and an eminent 
mathematician, who maintained a character of high 
integrity in public and in private life. She had 
for him, as he for her, a deep regard and esteem, 
but her heart remained untouched throughout life 
by love in its romantic sense. To her cousin 
William Freind, who married them, she writes : 
** I have the honour and happiness to be made 
the guest of a heart furnished with the best and 
greatest virtues, honesty, integrity, and universal 
benevolence, with the most engaging affection to 
everyone who particularly belongs to him. No 
desire of power, but to do good ; no use of it, but 
to make happy." When Mrs Montagu offers to 
join her husband in the North at the time of the 
1745 Rebellion, he writes in reply of the love and 
honour and affection he has always had for her, 
and adds that he now adores her for her greatness 
of mind shown in a letter which might have well 
become a Roman lady. Mrs Montagu shared in 
her husband's political life, and in all his concerns ; 
he always consulted her on any matter of import- 
ance. But he did not join in her social interests ; 
he was a man of many occupations, and we all 
know the immuring tendency of mathematics. It 
was not until after his death in 1775 that Mrs 
Montagu gave her most splendid entertainments. 
Her little boy was born in 1743, but to her great 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 35 

sorrow he died of convulsions when teething. In 
1758 Mr Montagu received a large accession of 
fortune by the death of a relative, and we find 
Mrs Montagu writing to Mrs Carter : '' I thought 
in fortune's as in folly's cup still laughed the bubble 
joy; but though this is a bumper, there is not a 
drop of joy in it, nor so much as the froth of a 
litde merriment. ... In about a week we shall 
set out for the North, where I am to pass about 
three months in the delectable conversation of 
stewards and managers of coal-mines, and this, by 
the courtesy of avarice, is called good fortune . . 
while in truth, like poor Harlequin in the play, 
I am acting a silly part dans rembarras des 
richessesy 

This strikes a note which seems peculiarly 
modern in our present age of sick hurry and divided 
aims. And in a letter to the Hon. Mrs Boscawen, 
Mrs Montagu writes of going to so many shops to 
buy what she did not want, to so many houses to visit 
people she did not care for, to so many places to 
learn news she was not interested in, that for herself 
and her friends no hours remained. "What," she 
goes on, " is the antidote or cure of the fatal poison 
of this city tarantula, so much worse than that of 
the fields, as the dancing is constant, and the giddi- 
ness perpetual, and not to be cured by a reasonable 
degree of exercise ; for we continue this figure- 
dance in regular confusion till Holbein's universal 
partner takes us by the hand." 



36 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Indeed Mrs Montagu possessed in a considerable 
degree the modern temperament, with its excessive 
nervous energy, its craving for excitement, and its 
consequent periods of lassitude and exhaustion. 
She was fond of the country, and admired its 
beauties ; in a letter to Lord Lyttleton we meet 
with an appreciation quite unusual in that century. 
She describes a magnificent sunset seen on a 
journey into Berkshire, and then tells how she 
'* watched the rising of every star till the whole 
heaven glowed with living sapphires ; then I chose 
to consider them no longer separately as glowing 
gems, but lost myself in worlds beyond worlds, and 
system beyond system ; till my mind rose to the 
great Maker of them all . . . ! " 

But despite her devotion to reading, she soon 
wearied of the country — " mirth here is reckoned 
madness, gaiety is idleness, and wit a crying sin,'' 
she writes. Country society is constantly brought 
under the lash of her satire ; and of the people of 
Yorkshire she says that they " are drunken and 
vicious, and worse than hypocrites, profligates ; I 
mean more offensive, and I know not w^hether less 
pernicious. It is wonderful to see people so little 
admirable so much admired " ; which remark orives 
rise to this characteristic reflection, '' Censure is 
bitter indeed, but it is a wholesome bitter, like 
wormwood, that preserves the wary breast from the 
infection and contagion of corrupt and vicious 
times." The country, however, gave leisure for 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 37 

the cultivation of her mind and of her friendships, 
which could hardly have ripened in the pressure of 
London life. 

Before we come to the assemblies at which Mrs 
Montagu shone as queen, let us consider for a 
moment her claim to the title of " blue stocking " 
on its intellectual side. Six volumes of her corres- 
pondence are available for examination, two pub- 
lished in 1810, two in 181 3, and two in 1906, 
with additional matter. These six volumes contain 
her letters up to 1760 only, but some letters of a 
subsequent date appear in Dr Doran's volume on 
Mrs Montagu. A great deal of material remains 
as yet unedited. The published correspondence, 
however, affords ample evidence of Mrs Montagu's 
character, tastes and occupations, and of her learn- 
ing and critical gifts. 

Her letters written before she was twenty-three 
are remarkable for their powers of visualisation, 
of conceiving character and consequence, powers 
which did not develop with maturity or she might 
have rivalled the novelists of her day. Her 
imagination, over-stimulated in youth, instead of 
gaining strength, flagged, and finally sank to earth, 
though indeed her entertainments continued to hold 
something of its vivid colouring. In her letters the 
old fertility of fancy became as time went on some- 
what too prolix ; prolixity is, indeed, the sin of her 
correspondence. " I can spin a thread so long as 
it seems neither to have end nor beginning, which 



38 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

serves to give my gentle correspondents an idea 
of eternity." Clever sayings still abound, witty 
comments, apt parallels, but they have the dryness 
of hard intellect, and her relation of political events 
is marked by an extreme tenuity. She herself is 
painfully aware of the decline in her *' picture- 
drawing faculty." In 1760 she writes to Lord 
Lyttleton of the time when her mind '' was inces- 
santly forming landscapes or history pieces, real 
portraits or grotesque forms," and she goes on : ** If 
any person had then advertised for a companion to 
travel through the deserts of Siberia or Africa, I 
would have recommended my Imagination to them 
as one which would show cities where even a 
cottage did not appear, or, like Moses' wand, 
would bring a river from a rock. . . . But from a 
painter this poor mind is sunk into a mere journal- 
writer." 

Her early letters hold in solution her Essay on 
Shakespeare, and contain the germ of her three 
Dialogues of the Dead. They show an unusual 
intimacy with Shakespeare's work, the quotations 
are unhackneyed and apposite, and now and again 
we get the very cadence of his phrases. . . . "I 
fell into a vexation, and from thence into a chagrin, 
and from thence into a melancholy. ..." It is 
clear that she was not merely acquainted with the 
poets, but that she had absorbed something of their 
poetry. When her sister was attacked by small- 
pox, Elizabeth was sent to a retired farmhouse for 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 39 

better security, and she writes, '' As to the master 
of this house, he is indeed to a tittle Spenser's 
meagre personage called Care." In an amusing 
skit sent to the Duchess of Portland, in which she 
feigns herself dead with grief at not hearing from 
her friend, she dates from " Pluto's Palace of dark- 
ness visible." '' Pluto inquired into the cause of 
my arrival, and upon telling him it, he said ^/lat 
lady had sent many lovers there by her cruelty. . . . 
I went to Ixion for counsel, but his head was so 
giddy ^vhh turning, he could not give me a steady 
opinion. . . . Tantalus was so dry he could not 
speak to be understood. ..." Her Dialogues of 
the Dead were undoubtedly elaborated from this. 

Her reading was wide and pursued with en- 
thusiastic interest. She was acquainted with Latin, 
and knew the Greek classics through translation, 
often Italian ; as a girl we find her expatiating with 
eagerness on the characters of Cicero and Atticus ; 
as a woman we listen to her discussing with acumen 
the choruses in Sophocles. She was well-read in 
English literature ; there is a passage in her letters 
in which she uses the little read play, Gammer 
Gurto7is Needle, in most apt illustration. Dr 
Young says, in his Letter on Origi7ial Composition, 
that genius is but a needle, and learning a bottle of 
hay, and so it must be long and diligently sought. 
" The Doctor was so positive in his assurance," 
writes Mrs Montagu, " that I set about seeking for 
my genius ; and as I had bottled very little hay, 



40 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

hoped to find it presently ; but I am no nearer the 
matter. Alas ! what good would it do me if I 
should find it, as Gammer Gurton does her needle, 
in the last act of the drama." Sir Philip Sidney 
provokes her flippancy, and causes her to reveal 
a characteristic attitude of mind. ^' Surely it is a 
pity two such excellent geniuses in Queen Eliza- 
beth's days as Spenser and Sir Philip should write 
only of such feigned and imaginary beings as 
faeries and lovers. . . ." She revels in absurd 
parodies of Sidney's style. Contemporary litera- 
ture, both English and French, is passed under 
review ; her remarks on Clarissa Harlowe are 
sound, and Voltaire early became the object of her 
attack. Her criticisms are not brilliant, nor sug- 
gestive, nor profound, but honest and sensible, the 
fruit of a cultivated mind. Her reading embraced 
a liberal education in literature, and in her case it 
stimulated, instead of stifling, her social gifts. The 
knowledge she gained became immediately avail- 
able for what she calls the *'sal volatile of lively 
discourse " — ready for immediate application to 
men and things. And so we find Gilbert West 
writing to her : — 

** I much approve, therefore, of your diligence in 
furnishing your magazines with large stores of 
ammunition of all sorts for conversation from 
authors of various kinds ; am.ong which, as your 
victories will give occasion to many rejoicings, I 
hope you will not fail to provide a good quantity 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 41 

of French squibs and crackers ; you had, if you 
have not wasted it, a sufficient store of wildfire of 
your own." 

Here is a snatch of conversation between Dr 
Johnson and Mrs Thrale on Mrs Montagu, as 
reported by Fanny Burney : — 

Mrs Thrale: Certainly she is the first woman 
for literary knowledge in England, and if in Eng- 
land, I hope I may say in the world. 

Dr Johnson : I believe you may, madam. She 
diffuses more knowledge in her conversation than 
any woman I know, or indeed, almost any man. 

Mrs Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare should 
serve as the final touchstone of her learning. 

She tells us in her Introduction that two motives 
impelled her to write this essay — her great admira- 
tion for Shakespeare's genius, and her still greater 
indignation at the treatment he had received from 
a French wit — namely, Voltaire, who called his 
tragedies monstrous farces, and attributed barbarism 
and ignorance to the nation for admiring him. 

The centuries succeeding Shakespeare's death 
had treated Shakespeare's plays as acting plays, 
with scant reverence — Dryden himself made garbled 
versions of them, and Colley Gibber's "adaptions" 
have become the proverbial type of grotesque 
travesty. The commentators, however, approached 
the subject in a more becoming spirit. The 
general tendency of their criticism was to do full 
justice to the natural genius or "intuition" of 



42 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

Shakespeare, and to attribute his many and glaring 
defects to the rudeness and immaturity of his age. 
Dryden, in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), 
Nicholas Rowe in his Preface to the Works (1709), 
Pope in his Preface (1725), Warburton in his Edi- 
tion (1747), Dr Johnson in his Preface (1765) — all 
these critics, with widely varying acumen, support 
this view. On the other hand, Shakespeare was 
violently attacked, notably in 1674, for his viola- 
tion of the Rules of Aristotle, especially for his 
neglect of the Unities of Action, Place and Time. 
To this attack Dr Johnson made a sound and con- 
clusive defence ; but Voltaire thought well to revive 
the charge, and press it home with all the vigour of 
his pen. 

Such was the state of Shakespeare commen- 
tary when Mrs Montagu wrote her Essay, pub- 
lished in 1769. She brought one qualification to 
her task beyond that of previous commentators ; she 
was just a little sensitive to those gusts of fresh 
and intoxicating air which were beginning to blow 
out of the future. This is proved by her uncon- 
ventional appreciation of the spontaneity of Scotch 
songs ... ''to me it seems there are no love- 
verses that seem suggested by the heart and 
softened in the language like some Scotch songs. 
I cannot put Petrarch and all his stars, suns and 
moons in competition with them, when they do but 
attempt to describe their mistress ' like a lily in a 
bogie.' " She could stray, too, with delight, from 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 43 

the trim parterres of contemporary literature into 
the wild scenery of Macpherson's Ossian — *' I hear 
Lord Marchmont says our old Highland bard is a 
modern gentleman of his acquaintance ; if it be so, 
we have a living poet who may dispute the pas on 
Parnassus with Pindar and the greatest of the 
ancients." In the Vale of Glencoe, it is not the 
thought of the Massacre, but the thought of Ossian 
that moves her. *' I wish'd Ossian would have 
come to us and told us a tale of other times. How- 
ever, imagination and memory assisted, and we 
recollected many passages in the very places that 
inspired them. I staid three hours listening to 
the roaring stream, and hoped some ghost would 
come on the blast of the mountain and show us 
the three grey stones erected to his memory." And 
so the exquisite order and neatness of Corneille's 
drama, with all its delicately adjusted mechanisms, 
failed to m ik:' entire appeal to her ; she saw too 
clearly the working of the machinery. She remarks 
that it is easy enough to preserve the unities where 
the drama consists in a mere series of conversa- 
tions. Indeed, she carries her reprisal boldly into 
the enemies' camp, and her defence of Shake- 
speare's genius resolves itself largely into an attack 
on the French drama as represented by Corneille. 
Her indignation against Voltaire gives that faint 
touch of passion which is enough to vitalise the essay. 
She uses the comparative method — always an 
effective one. Shakespeare is ranged against Cor- 



44 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

neille on the one side and the Greeks on the other. 
She draws analogies from the EHzabethan drama- 
tists, especially Ben Jonson. The most interesting 
section of her work, **On the Praeternatural Beings," 
contains a capable and suggestive survey of the 
use of the Supernormal in ancient and modern 
drama. Her most remarkable passage deals with 
the Celtic traditions which have been conveyed 
down from antiquity through the Druid and through 
the bard — traditions which animated the general 
scenery of nature ''by a kind of intelligence" — 
'•the reader will easily perceive what resources 
remained for the poet in this visionary land of 
ideal forms." In these days when we pride our- 
selves on our sensitiveness to the Celtic Renascence, 
it comes as a shock to find a paragraph like the 
following in this brown-leaved Eighteenth Century 
tome : " That awe of the immediate presence of 
the Deity, which, among the vulgar of other 
nations, is confined to temples and altars, was here 
diffused over every object. The Celt passed 
trembling through the woods and over the moun- 
tain, and near the lakes, inhabited by these invisible 
powers ; such apprehensions must indeed — 

Deepen the murmur of the faUing floods. 
And shed a browner horror on the woods ; 

give sadder whispers to every whisper of the animate 
or inanimate creation, and arm every shadow with 
terror." 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 45 

Voltaire, whom she disliked as a dangerous free- 
thinker, laid himself open to attack as a careless 
translator of Shakespeare's works. On this point, 
and others equally vulnerable, she strikes home 
with much sureness and dexterity. But Voltaire's 
loud-voiced proclamation of Shakespeare as an 
inspired barbarian, which swelled under provocation 
to a denunciation of him as an " intoxicated savage," 
was not to be drowned by her lady-like protest ; 
though a translation of part of her Essay into 
French five years later, and a new translation of 
Shakespeare's works, the two first volumes of which 
appeared in 1776, did much to shake Voltaire's 
standing as a critic of English literature. It was 
in Paris in 1776 that Mrs Montagu made the 
following famous retort, various versions of which 
are given in the Memoirs of the day. Voltaire, in 
a letter to d'Argental, had spoken of Shakespeare's 
works as an ''^norme fumier." Mrs Montagu, 
alluding to Voltaire's unscrupulous borrowings from 
our dramatist, remarked, " ce malheureux fumier 
avait engraisse une terre ingrate." 

Unfortunately Mrs Montagu's Essay is chiefly 
remembered by Dr Johnson's pronouncement upon 
it — a pronoucement wholly unfair, since Dr Johnson 
had not read all the book. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
said, in conversation, of the essay : '* I think that 
Essay does her honour," to which Johnson replied : 
" Yes, sir ; it does her honour, but it would do 
nobody else honour. I have, indeed, not read it all. 



46 



FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 



But when I take up the end of a web, and find it 
packthread, I do not expect by looking further to 
find embroidery." Such conclusion is, of course, 
absurd, since many writers are remembered merely 
by reason of a little embroidery worked upon a web 
of packthread — we follow page after page of dun- 
coloured web for the sake of reaching some brilliant 
glint of intellect, some remote flash of soul. Such 
illumination is, indeed, not to be found in this essay, 
but had Dr Johnson pursued his reading of it, he 
would possibly have modified his opinion as to the 
universality of the packthread, and allowed that 
there were some strands of fine silk woven in with 
the uniformity — good sense, insight into character, 
a clear and balanced judgment. 

Cowper's opinion of the Essay on Shakespeare 
was very high. Writing in 1788 to Lady Hesketh, 
he says, " The learning, the good sense, the sound 
judgment, and the wit displayed in it, fully justify 
not only my compliment, but all compliments that 
either have been already paid to her talents, or shall 
be paid hereafter." 

Mrs Montagu also contributed three Dialogues 
to Lord Lyttleton's Dialogues of the Dead, which 
volume perhaps suggested Walter Savage Landor's 
Imaginary Conversations. Mrs Montagu's dia- 
logues are between — Hercules and Cadmus ; 
Mercury and Mrs Modish ; Plutarch, Charon, and 
a Modern Bookseller. / They lack a certain light- 
ness of touch, essential to the success of such trifles, 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 47 

and the satire is somewhat obvious ; but they are 
well written. In the Second Dialogue, Mrs 
Modish, a fashionable lady, describes to Mercury 
how her time is occupied. Here is her description 
of bon ton : *' It is the child and the parent of 
jargon. It is — I can never tell you what it is ; but 
I will try to tell you what it is not. In conversation 
it is not wit ; in manners it is not politeness ; in 
behaviour it is not address ; but it is a little like 
them all. It can only belong to people of a certain 
race, who live in a certain manner, with certain 
persons, who have not certain virtues, and who 
have certain vices, and who inhabit a certain part of 
the town." The Third Dialogue reads peculiarly 
modern, — it is an attack on the contemporary taste 
in literature ; the Bookseller explains to Plutarch 
that he cannot sell Plutarch's Lives or other such 
works ; what people want is the Lives of the High- 
waymen. 

It is a little piquant to find this fashionable lady 
satirising ladies of fashion, this writer of erudite 
essays so severe on the tendencies of literature. 
It is the more piquant when we glance at the 
contemporary verdict on Mrs Montagu, which 
does not allow her the quality of aloofness, of 
removing herself above the turmoil and looking 
at it dispassionately. In all the pen portraits that 
have been left of her, she stands as a self-conscious 
centre round which her world revolves. There is 
a little vanity in her attitude, a little effort in her 



48 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

brilliance. Let us pass now from the lady in her 
boudoir to the lady in her salon, and inquire what 
qualifications were possessed by Mrs Montagu to 
queen it as the leader of the intellectual society of 
her day. 

** Beauty, Wit, Wisdom, Learning and Virtue 
united (to say nothing of Wealth)." Mrs Mon- 
tagu's was the '* beauty" of fragility combined 
with extraordinary animation. To her devotees 
she was ''a hothouse plant, fine and rare, but in- 
capable of enduring the cold of our climate if you 
are not housed the first day that the white frosts 
come in'' (Lord Lyttleton, 1760). Fanny Burney 
describes her in 1778 with more particularity but 
with less fervour. "She is middle-sized, very thin, 
and looks infirm ; she has a sensible and pene- 
trating countenance, and the air and manner of a 
woman accustomed to being distinguished, and of 
great parts. Dr Johnson, who agrees in this, told 
us that a Mrs Hervey, of his acquaintance, says 
she can remember Mrs Montagu trying for this 
same air and manner. . . . Nobody can now im- 
partially see her and not confess that she has ex- 
tremely well succeded." The enthusiastic Hannah 
More gives us a much kinder picture. . . . "Her 
form (for she has no body) is delicate even to 
fragility ; her countenance the most animated in 
the world ; the sprightly vivacity of fifteen, with 
the judgment and experience of a Nestor." 

Of her Learning we have already spoken, and 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 49 

her Virtue needs no support. Her Wit and 
Wisdom, which are so abundantly manifested in 
her correspondence, He hidden to-day under its 
proHxity ; but from contemporary evidence we 
know that these quahties shone conspicuously in 
her conversation. 

We have thus made the full circle of Mrs 
Montagu's virtues as enumerated by Lord Lyttle- 
ton, and they certainly give her many striking 
advantages in the social sphere. But if we are 
to know Mrs Montagu as a woman, we must take 
into account the verdicts of less prejudiced critics. 
It is significant to note that severe as these 
sometimes are, they nearly always introduce 
a tribute to Mrs Montagu's gifts of intellect or 
natural endowments. 

So eager was Mrs Montagu's desire for admira- 
tion, so extreme was her susceptibility to praise, 
that no flattery was too gross for her acceptance. 
Lady Louisa Stuart, grand-daughter of Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, speaking of her brother-in-law. 
Lord Macartney, says : '* I have heard him laugh 
peal upon peal as he reported behind Mrs Mon- 
tagu's back the fine speeches he had made, or 
intended to make her, bringing in (would you 
believe it?) Venus as well as Minerva, extolling 
the personal charms of a woman old enough to be 
his mother, and one who, to do her justice, was 
quite free from the weakness of wishing to disguise 
her age. . . . But when the laugh was over he 
4 



50 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

would conclude with, * After all, though, she is the 
cleverest woman I know ; meet her where you will, 
she says the best thing in the company.' " Indeed, 
those who most deplored her affectations, were 
willing^ to admit her real merits. The Hon. Mrs 
Boscawen writes to Mrs Delany : " The sketch 
you gave me of Madame de Montagu n'est que 
trop ressemblante, and much I fear that she will 
never be Mrs Montaofu an Eno-lish woman a^ain ! 
I wish she would learn by heart her friend, Mrs 
Chapone's, Chapter of Simplicity^ which surely is 
a better thing than egotism or boasting, or affecta- 
tion of any kind ; but how little temptation has 
she to affect anything, when she has s^ich natural 
endowments ! But so it is, and I own I apprehend 
qu'elle reviendra de ces courses tout a fait gatee." 
Here is Mrs Delany 's own comment on Mrs 
Montagu's Roo7n of Cupidons, in Montagu House, 
Portman Square. It " was opened with an 
assembly for all the foreigners, the literati, and 
the macaronis of the present age. Many and sly 
are the observations how such a genius at her age 
and so circimistanced (Mrs Montagu was now a 
widow) could think of painting the walls of her 
dressing-room with bowers of roses and jessamines 
entirely inhabited by little Cupids in all their little 
wanton ways, is astonishing ! . . ." 

This leads us to a consideration of Mrs Mon- 
tagu's wealth, which enabled her to indulge in 
these fancies, and which, according to Lady Louisa 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 51 

Stuart, was the mainspring of her success. At the 
very lowest estimate Mrs Montagu is said to have 
had a fortune of ten thousand a year. ** Together 
with a superabundance of vanity," writes Lady 
Louisa Stuart, '' vanity of that happy, contented, 
comfortable kind, which being disturbed by no 
uneasy doubts or misgivings, keeps us in con- 
stant good humour with ourselves and consequently 
with everything else — she had quick parts, great 
vivacity, no small share of wit, a competent portion 
of learning, considerable fame as a writer, a large 
fortune, a fine house, and an excellent cook. 
Observe the climax, for it is not unintentional, 
the cook may be the only one of the powers I 
have enumerated who could carry on the war 
singlehanded." 

The Room of Cupidons was not Mrs Montagu's 
only remarkable decorative achievement. There 
was the famous Chinese Room at her house in 
Hill Street, which was lined with painted paper 
of Pekin, and furnished with Chinese vases. The 
curtains were Chinese pictures in gauze, and the 
chairs Indian fan-sticks with cushions of Japan 
satin painted. With regard to this room Mrs 
Montagu writes to her cousin, the Rev. Mr Freind, 
** Sick of Grecian elegance and symmetry, or 
Gothic grandeur and magnificence, we must all 
seek the barbarous gaudy gout of the Chinese ; 
and fatheaded Pagods and shaking mandarins bear 
the prize from the first works of antiquity ; and 



52 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Apollo and Venus must give way to a fat idol 
with a sconce on his head. You will wonder I 
should condemn the taste I have complied with, 
but in trifles I shall always conform to the fashion." 
Mrs Montagu built for herself Montagu House, 
in Portman Square (now No. 22, the residence of 
Viscount Portman). It was begun in 1781 from 
designs by James (Athenian) Stuart, who, 
adopting Johnson's metaphor, addresses Mrs 
Montagu as '' Montagu- Minerva." The house 
contained other famous rooms beside the Room of 
Cupidons — the ''Feather" Room, and the ''Great" 
Room. The Feather Room stands as the 
apotheosis of feather work, so popular with the 
ladies of the day. Its feather hangings were of 
Mrs Montagu's own making, and occupied nearly 
ten years to complete. There are frequent demands 
in Mrs Montagu's letters for half an ounce of 
French partridge feathers, or half an ounce of the 
best dyed yellow feathers, or the neck and breast 
feathers of the Michaelmas Goose. " Pray has not 
the macaw dropped some small blue or yellow 
feathers ? " she writes to a friend. There was a 
period when feather work ranked as an exquisite 
art ; witness the feather mantles of the Incas ; and 
Mrs Montagu's Feather Room remains the most 
elaborate attempt of modern times to revive this 
art. The poet Cowper, who had heard of the 
project through his cousin, Lady Hesketh, writing 
in 1788, describes the hangings thus: — 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 53 

" The birds put off their every hue 
To dress a room for Montagu. 
The peacock sends his heavenly dyes, 
His rainbows and his starry eyes ; 
The pheasant, plumes which round enfold 
His mantling neck with downy gold. 
The cock his arch'd tail's azure show, 
And river-blanched the swan his snow. 
All tribes beside of Indian name 
That glossy shine or vivid flame 
Where rises and where sets the day, 
Whate'er they boast of rich or gay, 
Contribute to the gorgeous plan. 
Proud to advance it all they can. 
This plumage neither dashing shower 
Nor blasts that shake the dripping bower, 
Shall drench again or discompose, 
But, screen'd from every storm that blows. 
It boasts a splendour ever new, 
Safe with protecting Montagu." 

In 1790 Hannah More describes another room 
in Montagu House. She writes that Mrs Montagu 
is " fitting up the great room in a superb style, 
with pillars of verd antique, and had added an 
acre to what was before a very large town garden." 
This ''Great" Room has ceilings painted by 
Angelica Kauffmann. 

But in spite of its scale and splendour, the 
house as a whole gave to so critical an observer as 
Horace Walpole no impression of ostentation. He 
writes, '' Instead of vagaries, it is a simple, noble 
edifice. When I came home I recollected that 
though I had thought it so magnificent a house, 



54 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

there was not a morsel of gilding. It Is grand, not 
tawdry, nor larded and embroidered and pomponned 
with shreds and remnants, and cliquant like all the 
harlequinades of Adam." 

Enough of the setting : what of the qualities of 
the hostess ? 

A hostess may excel in one of two directions. 
She may attract people by the magnetism of her 
personality, and hold them by her conversation, her 
beauty or her charm ; or she may have the faculty 
of creating an atmosphere in which her guests 
reveal themselves ; in which case the success of 
her assemblies will depend less upon the sparks she 
emits and more upon the sparks she evokes. 
Mrs Montagu belonged to the first class of 
hostess : she gave freely of herself, but it depended 
entirely upon chance whether her guests chose to 
exert themselves. They remained Individual units, 
a mere mechanical combination, for Mrs Montagu 
lacked the magic to fuse the heterogeneous mass 
into chemical unity. She had no power of directing 
conversation Into fertile channels, she possessed no 
divining rod that would lead her Instinctively to 
fresh springs of thought among her guests. She 
laboured at times under the sense that she was 
the slave and not the master of conversation. 
Nevertheless her conversational talents were ''of a 
truly superior order," to quote Madame dArblay, 
*' strong, just, clear, and often eloquent. Her 
process in argument, notwithstanding an earnest 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 55 

solicitude for pre-eminence, was uniformly polite 
and candid. But her reputation for wit seemed 
always in her thoughts, marring their natural flow 
and untutored expression." Mrs Thrale sums her 
up more trenchantly, '' brilliant in diamonds, solid 
in judgment, critical in talk.'' We may add also , 
Dr Johnson's tribute: ''Mrs Montagu is par 
pluribus. Conversing with her you may find variety 
in one." 

Almost all people of note and distinction 
frequented her assemblies, — authors, critics, artists, 
orators, lawyers, clergy, tourists, travellers, to quote 
the comprehensive list of Lady Louisa Stuart, who 
adds that Mrs Montagu made entertainment for all 
ambassadors, sought out all remarkable foreigners, 
especially if men of letters ; nay, she occasionally 
exhibited a few of the very fine exclusive set 
themselves. Garrick recited at her parties : we 
read of his doing the dagger scene from Macbeth, 
and King Lear's maledictions on his daughters. 
Lady Louisa Stuart gives the best account of Mrs 
Montagu's curious practice of arranging her guests 
in a circle, a method which we will describe more 
fully later on. 

The same acute critic tells how there gathered 
about Mrs Montagu a horde of toad-eaters — toad- 
eaters from interest and toad-eaters from vanity ; 
but that even these did not flatter so inordinately 
as the somewhat ignorant but worthy people whose 
admiration for Mrs Montagu was genuine. 



56 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Mrs Montagu's most lavish period of entertain- 
ment began after the completion of her house in 
Portman Square. Horace Walpole tells us that 
she gave a splendid inaugural breakfast to ** seven 
hundred persons on opening her great room and 
the room with the hangings of feathers." Up to 
1796 she received royally — royalty too, for the 
Queen and six Princesses breakfasted with her in 
1791. Two hundred or three hundred guests were 
frequently present at her breakfast parties. Mrs 
Montagu gave, besides, two or three great dinner- 
parties a week. 

And yet entertaining so miscellaneously, and on 
so lavish a scale, Mrs Montagu found leisure for a 
sincere cultivation of friendship. Her letters to 
Mrs Carter display perhaps more feeling than any 
of her other writings. Her cold and unromantic 
nature made her friendship with men safe and 
agreeable, and the gallantry of the phrases they 
addressed to her were no more than the convention 
of the day. Mr Montagu was no doubt as fully 
assured of his wife's Roman virtue, as of her 
Roman fortitude ; and her train of admirers 
allowed themselves to boast of their devotion, 
because they knew themselves absolutely secure. 
Dr Monsey writes cheerfully to Lord Lyttleton 
that the Earl of Bath is fall'n desperately in love 
with one who seems not insensible of his passion ; 
and adds — '' I think 'tis time for you and I to look 
about us, for an Earl is better than a Baron or a 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 57 

quack doctor. . . . Now there are three fools 
of us." 

Of these *' three fools " Lord Lyttleton evinces 
the most tender regard for Mrs Montagu in his 
letters to her ; he displays a sympathetic thought- 
fulness for all details concerning her welfare ; her 
delicacy of health evidently made strong appeal to 
him. The Earl of Bath shows reliance upon her 
tact and right feeling ; he asks her to negotiate a 
delicate matter, whereby a piece of silk or damask 
may be sent to Mrs Carter, '* to make her fine 
when she comes to Tunbridge," in such a manner 
as shall not wound her susceptibilities. The 
Doctor, lively if not grotesque in conversation, 
and sometimes coarse in speech, seems to have 
been the most genuinely attached to her. Mrs 
Montagu discriminates cleverly between the char- 
acters of the Earl of Bath and of Dr Monsey in 
the following passage : — 

''His Lordship's talents, like colours in the 
prism, formed of the brightest rays, are so well 
arranged and so happily mingled, that though 
strong and vivid, they never pain the sight. The 
Doctor's understanding is like Harlequin's coat, 
gay, not only from the different colours that com- 
pose it, but from the heterogeneous jumble in 
which they lie, running at once from black to 
white, from red to blue." 

A word must be said concerning Mrs Montagu's 
relationship with Dr Johnson. We have seen how 



58 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

highly he praises her conversational powers — the 
variety of her range of subject — the knowledge she 
diffuses ; and at the same time how he depreciates 
somewhat unjustly her Essay on Shakespeare, His 
behaviour to her throughout is marked by a like 
inconsistency. 

Between Dr Johnson and Mrs Montagu kindly 
feeling existed in the beginning. Mrs Montagu 
awarded to Johnson's works this very high tribute : 
** That were an angel to give the imprimatur, 
Dr Johnson's works were among those very few 
which could not be lessened by a line." 

When she showed him some plates that had 
belonged to Queen Elizabeth, he told her ''that 
they had no reason to be ashamed of their present 
possessor, who was so little inferior to the first.'* 
In the profile portrait of Mrs Montagu, painted by 
James Barry, there is, curiously enough, a resem- 
blance to the Tudor Queen — it shows the same 
keenness of intellect- — it suggests the same coldness 
of disposition. 

After Mr Montagu's death, Mrs Montagu gave 
Mrs Williams, the blind poetess, who lived under 
Dr Johnson's roof, an annuity of ;^io a year; and 
in 1775 we find Dr Johnson writing to Mrs 
Montagu in this strain : ** All that the esteem and 
reverence of mankind can give you has been long 
in your possession, and the little that I can add to 
the voice of nations will not much exalt ; of that 
little, however, you are, I hope, very certain." He 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 59 

was flattered by the attentions she paid him. After 
a splendid entertainment at which many celebrated 
literary persons were present, Dr Maxwell asked 
him if he were not highly gratified by his visit. 
** No, Sir," said he, *'not \i\^iAy gratified-, yet I do 
not recollect to have passed many evenings with 
fewer objections T Less grudgingly he wrote to 
Mrs Montagu : " The favour of your service can 
never miss a suitable return but from ignorant or 
thoughtless men ; and to be ignorant of your emin- 
ence is not easy, but to him who lives out of reach 
of the public voice." 

But on occasion he criticised her in a very 
different strain. If he praised her benevolence he 
attacked her vanity, suggesting that though she 
knew very little Latin, and no Greek, ** she is 
willing you should think she knows them." Beattie 
suggests that Johnson was jealous of her conversa- 
tional renown, and of her position as Queen of the 
Blue-Stockings. " Mrs Montagu has more wit than 
anybody," Beattie writes, '*and Johnson could not 
bear that anyone should be thought to have wit 
but himself" Johnson began to speak of her 
unkindly even before the definite quarrel took 
place. 

The occasion of the quarrel arose out of Johnson's 
Life of Lord Lyttleton. Lyttleton was one of Mrs 
Montagu's most intimate friends. Mrs Carter 
speaks of his " integrity, simplicity and gentle- 
ness" ; and Thomson in the " Seasons," — this is no 



60 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

mere ** poetical " tribute in Touchstone's sense of 
the word — praises his warm benevolence of mind 
and honest zeal unwarped by party rage. To Mrs 
Montagu he was ** the most sincere and amiable 
friend, the best instructor, the noblest example, the 
director of my studies, the companion and guide of 
all my literary amusements." Now in the Life, Dr 
Johnson adopts a patronising tone that could not 
fail to be offensive to Lyttleton's friends. With 
regard to the Dialogues of the Dead he speaks of 
"poor Lyttleton" returning his acknowledgments 
" with humble gratitude," — " acknowledgments 
either for flattery or justice." He says of Lyttle- 
ton's History of Henry //., that it was " published 
with such anxiety as only vanity can dictate." It 
is small wonder that Mrs Montagu's extreme indig- 
nation was aroused by these implications. 

Horace Walpole writes that " Mrs Montagu and 
her Msenades intended to tear him (Johnson) 
limb from limb for despising their moppet, Lord 
Lyttleton." When Mrs Montagu and Dr Johnson 
chanced to be present at the same assembly, they 
kept apart *' like the East from the West." On 
one occasion they met at Mrs Thrale's, and 
Fanny Burney describes the encounter to Mr 
Cambridge : — 

'* ' And how did Mrs Montagu herself behave ? ' 
** Very stately indeed at first. She turned from 
him very stiffly, and with a most distant air, and 
without even curtseying to him, and with a firm 



MRS MONTAGU (1720-1800) 61 

intention to keep to what she had publicly declared 
— that she would never speak to him more ! How- 
ever, he went up to her himself, longing to begin ! 
and very roughly said : ' Well, Madam, what's 
become of your fine new house ? I hear no more 
of it.' " 

But though forced to answer on this occasion, 
Mrs Montagu did not abandon her policy ; and in 
1 78 1 Johnson remarks with a measure of soreness : 
**Mrs Montagu has dropped me. Now, Sir, there 
are people whom one should like very well to drop, 
but would not want to be dropped by." 

This quarrel — involving unfortunately no alter- 
cation as Horace Walpole laments — provided 
delightful gossip for society in general, and for 
Horace Walpole and his friend William Mason in 
particular. These two had a recent cause for 
resentment against Dr Johnson on their own 
account by reason of his attitude towards Gray. 
Mason has a mind, he says, to weave the squabble 
into a Mock Epic, in which Mrs Montagu shall 
enact Queen Ashtaroth, and Dr Johnson Dagon. 
But this particular Lampoon never got written. 

How little did these correspondents realise that 
Johnson was to be the familiar through future ages, 
not only of the man in the study, but of the man in 
the street ; while their personalities, and the person- 
alities of most of their contemporaries, and the 
personality of Mrs Montagu, were to be double- 
locked away from the world, opening only to the 



62 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

infrequent keys of culture or research. Horace 
Walpole's Letters, of course, will survive as litera- 
ture at its raciest ; but who reads — who will ever 
read — Mrs Montagu ? Yet her correspondence 
shows abundantly that quality by which she is 
principally distinguished — the quality of Wit — a 
quality rare in England, which established her 
queenship amid the hostesses of the day. Separated 
from its gorgeous framework, her wit yet scintillates 
out of the dim brown pages of worm-eaten volumes 
— still lives by the vitality with which Mrs Montagu 
created for herself in her own day, a name, a 
reputation, and a throne. 




SAMUEL JOHNSON 

FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. 



L 



'^ 



DRAMATIS PERSONiE OF THE BAS BLEU 

A MOVEMENT often goes by unperceived, 
because its elements are so dispersed that 
they cannot be apprehended. This is especially 
the case in an ephemeral movement passing over 
society. A few intellectual reunions — a few splendid 
entertainments — these are the commonplace of 
almost every age. Some sympathetic force is 
needed to crystallise the dispersed elements, to 
bring the specialising characteristics into proper 
focus, to concentrate the nebulous vapour into a 
star. Such sympathetic force was supplied to the 
Blue-Stocking movement by Hannah More in her 
poem Bus Bleu. Her crystal is perhaps not without 
flaw, her focus gives a slightly blurred picture, her 
star is not of the first magnitude — at least in our 
eyes. But we must remember Dr Johnson's opinion 
of her poetry in general. When poetry became 
the topic at a dinner-party at which both he and 
Hannah More were present, '* Hush, hush," he 
remarked, ** . . . it is talking of the art of war 
before Hannibal." We must also remember his 
opinion of the Bas Bleu in particular : ** There was 
no name in poetry," he said, "that might not be 
glad to own it." Though to-day the eagerness 



64 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

to claim its authorship would be no doubt con- 
siderably lessened, and though this '* most powerful 
versificatrix in the language " no longer commands 
the homage of our literary dictators, yet the Bas 
Bleu survives as the microcosm of a little world 
unique in our literary history ; as the record of a 
movement, brilliant, transient, that attracted most 
of the principal figures of the age ; as a burning- 
glass, drawing to a point a number of vagrant 
lights, and including them in one frame. 

The Dramatis Personae of the Bas Bleu are 
but few in number. They fall roughly into two 
divisions, the chief characters of the Drama and 
the Guests at Mrs Vesey's. 

Let us consider the chief characters first. Most 
important come the three great hostesses : Mrs 
Vesey, to whom the poem is addressed ; Mrs 
Boscawen, a lady of considerable note in her day ; 
and Mrs Montagu. Mrs Thrale Hannah More 
ignores altogether. 

" The vanquish'd triple crown to you, 
Boscawen sage, bright Montagu 
Divided fell ; your cares in haste 
Rescued the ravag'd realms of Taste. ..." 

Next follow Mrs Montagu's trusty lieutenants. 
Lord Lyttleton, William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, 
and Mrs Elizabeth Carter. The ties that united 
these three and Mrs Montagu in bonds of friend- 
ship have already been mentioned, and further 
instances are quoted in Mrs Carters life. Horace 



DRAMATIS PERSONiE OF BAS BLEU 65 

Walpole Is also named here, but we will put him 
in the *' Guests at Mrs Vesey's " caste as he appears 
there again. 

" And Lyttleton^s accomplished name 
And witty Pulteney shar'd the fame ; 
The Men not bound by pedant rules 
Nor Ladies Precieuses Ridicules ; 
For polish'd Walpole show'd the way 
How wits may be both learn'd and gay; 
And Carter taught the female train 
The deeply wise are never vain. . . ." 

The Hon. Mrs Boscawen's name was quoted, 
it will be remembered, in the Herald verses — 
** high-bred, elegant Boscawen." She was the wife 
of Admiral Boscawen — a lady at once ^* polite, 
learned, judicious and humble." Bos well gives 
her the palm over every other lady for certain 
qualities . . . ** if it be not presumptuous in me 
to praise her, I would say that her manners are the 
most agreeable, and her conversation the best, of 
any lady with whom I ever had the happiness to 
be acquainted." There are stray letters of hers 
in various collections of correspondence — clever — 
one had almost said ''smart" — letters, thickly 
interlarded with French idiom and phrase. Mrs 
Boscawen is famous for her friendships : we may 
quote part of an epistle. Sensibility^ addressed by 
Hannah More to this lady, since it mentions 
certain Blue- Stockings in addition to those already 
named : — 






66 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

" Yours is the bliss, and Heav'n no dearer sends, 
To call the wisest, brightest, best, your friends, 
And while to thee I raise the votive line, 
O, let one grateful own these friends are mine : 
With Carter trace the wit to Athens known, 
Or view in Montagu that wit our own ; 
Or mark, well pleas'd, Chapone's instructive page 
Intent to raise the morals of the age. . . . 
Delany^ too, is ours ; serenely bright 
Wisdom's strong ray, and virtue's milder light ; 
And she who bless'd the friend and grac'd the page 
Of Swift, still lends her lustre to our age. 
Long, long protract thy light, O Star benign ! 
Whose setting beams with added lustre shine." 

And now, with the help of the Bas Bleu, and 
of Sensibility, let us muster the ladies of our Blue- 
Stocking company before the imagination, and try 
to fancy how they looked and how they bore 
themselves. Let us call them from the shades to 
take part in a little pageant on our behalf. We 
shall play the part on this occasion of the small 
gossiper, the fashion journalist, the purveyor of 
items that may give local colour to the groups, 
the chronicler of costume, triumphant if we can 
obtain for the inquiring reader any particulars as 
to cost of material, or minor details of this kind. 

We will suppose that Mrs Boscawen has made 
her exit, and we have in the caste Mrs Vesey, Mrs 
Montagu (with the Earl of Lyttleton and the Earl 
of Bath in attendance), Mrs Carter, Hannah More 
herself ; and strayed out of the poem of Sensibility, 
Mrs Chapone and Mrs Delany. Mrs Thrale and 



DRAMATIS PERSONiE OF BAS BLEU 67 

Fanny Burney have not been granted entrance 
into Hannah More's hierarchy, but the caste is not 
complete without them, and we must open to them 
the stage-door. 

Shall we peep first into the Green Room, where 
the ladies are attiring themselves, and examine the 
elaborate batterie de toilette described so deliclously 
in the Rape of the Lock : — 

" Each silver vase in mystic order laid. 
Here, robed in white, the nymph intent adores 
With head uncovered, the cosmetic pow'rs. ... 
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks, 
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box. 
The tortoise here and elephant unite 
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white. 
Here files of pins extend their shining rows, 
Puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, billets-doux." 

We must remove the last two items from the 
toilet-table. The Bible is sacred to the ladies 
present, and they do not countenance billets-doux. 
Powder and patches and paint and rouge, however, 
are in great request ; we may be very sure that 
Mrs Thrale is employing these because she was 
obliged to continue the rouge into old age, owing 
to its discolouration of her skin. Mrs Delany and 
Mrs Montagu w^ould have little use for cosmetics, on 
account of the brilliance of their complexions ; and 
rouge would not well become little Burney 's brown- 
toned skin, which must have been very fine in 
texture, for she possessed, in common with Mrs 



68 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Delany, an exXr^m^ facility a rougir. Burke told 
Hannah More that at eighty-eight Mrs Delany 
-blushed like a girl." Perhaps Mrs Carter and 
Mrs Chapone despised to some extent the fashion ; 
we certainly read of Mrs Carter wearing her hair 
dressed flat, when high headdresses were in vogue. 
We will imagine Mrs Montagu before her mar- 
riage, having just come from the Plunge Bath in 
Marylebone— recommended to her for her head- 
aches—a fearsome ordeal, which caused terror in her 
friends. Private baths in the Eighteenth Century 
were not so much a luxury as an impossible ideal. 
There were public baths, it is true— the Plunge 
Bath at Marylebone above mentioned— baths at 
the watering-places, especially the famous ones at 
Bath itself, where there was a regular promenade 
for bathers. We read of japanned bowls floating 
on the waters before the ladies filled with perfumes, 
essences, oils, and other toilet accessories. That 
old stoic, Horace Walpole, was a firm believer m 
cold water. '' My great nostrum is the use of cold 
water inwardly and outwardly on all occasions, and 
total disregard of precaution against catching cold. 
A hat, you know, I never wear; my breast I never 
button, nor wear greatcoats, etc. I have often had 
the gout in my face (as last week) and eyes, and 
instantly dip my head in a pail of cold water, which 
always cures it, and does not send it anywhere else." 
But he and Lord Monboddo, who advocated fresh 
air as well as the monkey-descent theory, were in 



DRAMATIS PERSONiE OF BAS BLEU 69 

this respect notable exceptions to their age. When 
Elizabeth Robinson went to stop with the Duke 
and Duchess of Portland at Bulstrode, their place 
in Buckinghamshire, and desired to continue the 
bath treatment, it was found that the bathing tubs 
were so out of order ''we have not yet been able 
to make them hold water, but I hope next w^eek 
they will serve the purpose." Since we are sup- 
posing Elizabeth Robinson to have just come 
from the Plunge Bath, she must not wear any of 
those magnificent clothes in which she afterwards 
delighted — brilliant with diamonds and radiant with 
ribbons — her slender beauty, tending to leanness, is 
better suited in a simpler costume. 

We imagine Mrs Carter drinking a cup — perhaps 
several cups — of tea. She also suffers from head- 
aches, and adopts an equally arduous, but more 
agreeable method of cure, long country walks, 
generally in the early morning. The athletic 
woman was of course an anomaly in this age ; 
though Mrs Thrale does tell us — with some in- 
consequence — that Lady Sarah Bunbury '' was a 
cricket player and ate beefsteaks upon the Steyne 
at Brighthelmstone " (Brighton). As Mrs Carter 
stands sipping her tea, we feel that, strict as she 
is, provincial as she is, she has perhaps more 
sympathy of understanding than any other lady 
present — a quickness of intuition that passes 
through the outside trappings direct to the core. 
See with what tenderness she looks at Mrs Vesey ! 



70 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

There is love and admiration and pity in her glance. 
If she surprises a beautiful sight in nature, she longs 
for Mrs Montagu to share the joy with her ; and 
her friend, Mrs Chapone, does not possess more 
good sense, more kindly humour. 

Fanny Burney is the last to be ready ; there are 
little alterations, final stitches. And now, since 
all are dressed, ring up the curtain and let the 
procession pass before us. 

First comes Mrs Vesey. We have but scant 
material for a reconstruction of her appearance ; 
no details but those ugly ear-trumpets that Fanny 
Burney describes as hanging to her wrists and 
slung about her neck. The sweetness, the sim- 
plicity, the originality of her nature appear to have 
made her friends forget to describe both her looks 
and her clothes. And yet we know her better than 
almost any lady of the group. The very vague- 
ness of outline is appropriate to this ethereal being, 
this sylph who seems to have strayed in a fit of 
absent-mindedness into the Eighteenth Century, 
which is so alien to her, and which yet welcomed 
her so kindly. For lack of information we will 
vision her clad in the ''newest colour" — one suit- 
able to her nationality — that ** truly fashionable 
silk " described by Hannah More, *' a soup9on de 
vert, lined with a soupir dtouff^e et bradde de 
Vespdrance . . . esperance in the new language of 
the times means rosebuds." 

Strange contrast, Mrs Vesey, to the clear-cut, 



DRAMATIS PERSON.E OF BAS BLEU 71 

definite personality of her friend Hannah More, 
whose dark eyes shine diamond keen ; strange con- 
trast, Mrs Vesey's life, to the practical ardour out 
of which Hannah More built so notable a monu- 
ment. Hannah More loved splendour in her youth, 
and had herself painted in emerald earrings ; but 
we will choose her to be in more characteristic 
attire. Her dress shall be of Quaker plainness, 
though about her shoulders she wears a yellow 
richly-embroidered shawl. A pretty net cap is tied 
under her chin with white satin ribbon. She passes 
before our eyes, patient, energetic, incredibly occu- 
pied, belonging to this Eighteenth Century company 
by her enthusiasm for its ideals, by her sympathy 
with its conventions : and yet the precursor of a 
new epoch. 

All eyes are turned on the next figure in the 
procession. She enters with an air of distinction, 
stooping a little ; her blue eyes have peculiar ani- 
mation, and her brown hair is looped back from her 
forehead over a cushion. Mrs Montagu wears her 
** new pink silver negligee trimmed, too, with silver 
fort galament," in which she was told she looked '* a 
merveille." There is no lady in all England whose 
conversation enjoys so high a reputation : " put on 
your blue-stockings," for the feast of intellect is to 
begin. 

" Parson Carter's daughter " follows next. She 
shall come plainly dressed in that sober-coloured 
silk or damask that the Earl of Bath had wished 



72 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

so delicately conveyed to her — a figure in no way 
remarkable but for the nobility and goodness shin- 
ing out of her face. She carries her knitting in a bag 
on her arm, for though she is the most learned of 
all the Blue-Stockings, it is as a listener, rather 
than as a talker, that she excels. 

Little difficulty is there in picturing the grace 
and stateliness of Mrs Delany, with her charming 
figure, her fair and curling hair, her brilliant com- 
plexion, and her dove's eyes. The spirit of all that 
is best in the Eighteenth Century seems to reside 
in her ; its perfect adjustment of means to ends ; 
the fragrance of its decorum ; the delicate employ- 
ment of its leisure. Her dress must be described 
in detail — dress was evidently another art in which 
her exquisite taste shone. Indeed, her excellence 
in this was such that at one of the Drawing 
Rooms the Queen *' commended my clothes." Mrs 
Delany's letters are full of minute descriptions of 
petticoats embroidered in gold and silver and 
chenille and coral ; we learn that *' hoops are made 
of the richest damask, trimmed with gold and 
silver, and cost fourteen guineas a hoop," together 
with many other interesting particulars of costume. 
Domestic particulars, too ; Mrs Delany is an advo- 
cate of drugs strange to our ears. An infallible 
recipe for ague is a spider, put into a goose-quill, 
well sealed and secured, and hung about the neck. 
For a cough she recommends two or three snails 
boiled in barley water or tea-water. Lady Llan- 



DRAMATIS PERSONiE OF BAS BLEU 73 

over, who edits Mrs Delany's letters, is a believer in 
the medicinal virtue of spiders and their webs ; the 
web rolled into a pill and swallowed is good, she 
asserts, in cases of certain fevers. But to return to 
Mrs Delany in her social aspect : we will picture 
her in the dress that she wore at a wedding in 
1734 ... "a brocaded lute-string (glace silk), 
white ground, with great ramping flowers in shades 
of purples, reds and greens. I gave thirteen shil- 
lings a yard ; it looks better than it describes, and 
will make a show. I shall wear it with dark purple 
and gold ribbon, and a d/ac^ hood for decency's 
sake." 

Mrs Chapone we must have in her ardent 
enthusiastic girlhood, strenuous, argumentative, 
emotional. We see her as she appears in Miss 
Highmore's drawing of Richardson reading the 
manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison to his friends 
in the grotto of his house at North End, Hammer- 
smith. Her round face, which is shaded by a 
broad-trimmed hat, has sweetness and intelligence, 
and the drawing does not bear out the general 
report of her ugliness. She wears a dark dress, 
cut low, with a white V-shaped front let in, a white 
frill-work borders the top of her dress, while a dark 
cloak is clasped at the neck. 

In what costume shall we picture Mrs Thrale — 
short, plump, and brisk, who now arrives upon the 
scene — Mrs Thrale of the blue expressive eyes, 
the amazing vivacity, and the almost cloying sweet- 



74 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

ness? Shall we have her in that dark gown of 
purple silk shot^with green, which made Dr John- 
son exclaim, ''You little creatures should never 
wear those sort of clothes. . . . What ! have not 
all insects gay colours ? " Shall we show how she 
followed this advice by asking her to don that 
wonderful costume of her middle age — ** a tiger- 
skin shawl lined with scarlet, and only five colours 
upon her headdress — on the top of a flaxen wig, a 
bandeau of blue velvet, a bit of tiger ribbon, a 
white beaver hat and plume of black feathers ? " 
Rather will we require her to make her entrance in 
richer, more dignified attire, wearing that Court- 
dress, magnificent and not heavy, which was copied 
in a Spitalsfield loom from a dress brought by 
Captain Burney from the South Sea Islands, and 
trimmed, as Mrs Thrale wrote to Fanny Burney, 
*' with grebe skins and gold to the sum of £(^^ — 
the trimming alone." 

Fanny Burney shall appear before us in the guise 
of her early youth, at the moment, perhaps, of her 
greatest charm — the moment when she is medi- 
tating Evelina : when life has still its sting of 
freshness, its tonic of variety. She comes in with 
piquant timidity, looking hither and thither with 
her quick-discerning but short-sighted green eyes. 
She is dressed for masquerade, "a close pink Per- 
sian vest . . . covered with gauze in loose pleats, 
and with flowers, etc., etc. : a little garland or 
wreath of flowers on the left side of my head.** 



DRAMATIS PERSON.E OF BAS BLEU 75 

Fanny Burney is never very definite about clothes ; 
she seems to have been over-fastidious in her 
toilette to the point of worry, and to have dismissed 
the subject with a feeling of relief w^hen she turned 
to her pen. But this fancy costume is fitting to 
the happy blossoming time of Fanny Burney 's life 
— it is a dress Evelina might have worn ; and 
surely the delicate, sensitive figure is not unlike 
Evelina herself. 

And what about the husbands of these ladies ? 
For out of the company only two are unmarried. 
Are they to be included in the Bas Bleu pro- 
cession ? 

Mr Thrale must certainly appear, for he was as 
much responsible for the entertainments as his wife, 
and quite as important a personage at them. Mr 
Vesey, perhaps, should be allowed on the scene for 
a moment ; so social a being must surely sometimes 
have attended his wife's parties, and we know he 
had intellectual ambitions and friends of worth. 
Hannah More, however, does not see fit to mention 
him, though her poem is addressed to his wife. 
As to Mr Montagu, his mathematics, his Parlia- 
mentary duties, his coal-mines occupied him wholly. 
We would like to have had dear old Dr Delany of the 
company, and the brave General dArblay; but it was 
during her widowhood that Mrs Delany gave those 
select little dinners that link her with the Bas Bleu 
movement, and the d'Arblays were too poor to en- 
tertain either in England or in France. Then the 



76 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

shadowy Chapone died ten months after marriage. 
In England, as in France, speaking generally, there 
is no recognised niche for the husband in the Salon. 
All this while the '' Guests at Mrs Vesey's " are 
patiently waiting in the wings. But we have 
claimed '' Place aux Dames ! " for the guests are 
all of them men. They are attired in classic 
nomenclature worthy of their dignity and pursuits. 
We have Roscius, enacted by Garrick ; Maro 
performed by William Mason the poet, friend 
of Horace Walpole, biographer of Gray, author of 
the English Garden, patron of Brown, the land- 
scape gardener; we have Cato, bodied in the 
mighty form of Dr Johnson ; the part of Hor- 
tensius undertaken by Burke, who is here repre- 
sented again as giving up to a party what was 
meant for mankind. Walpole plays Horace, and 
Sir William Weller Pepys, Lcelius : — 

" Here Roscius gladden'd every eye. 
Why comes not Maro ? far from town 
He rears the Urn to Taste, and Brown ; 
Plants cypress round the Tomb of Gray, 
Or decks his English Garden gay. . . . 
Here rigid Cato, awful sage ! 
Bold censor of a thoughtless age, 
Once dealt his pointed moral round, 
And, not unheeded, fell the sound. . . . 
Here once Hortensius lov'd to sit 
Apostate now from social wit ! 
Ah ! why in wrangling senates waste 
The noblest parts, the happiest taste .? 



DRAMATIS PERSONS OF BAS BLEU 77 

Why Democratic Thunders wield 
And quit the Muses' calmer field ? 
Taste thou the gentler joys they give 
With Horace SLud with Loelius live." 

Other important individuals, not named in this 
catalogue, have prominent parts, and will appear at 
the fitting moment ; and the crowd of '' supers" is 
legion. ** Supers "are only called upon to enact 
one simple emotion; the Bas Bleu "supers," with 
striking originality, lay emphasis on virtues unusual 
in their calling. Hannah More enumerates them 
thus : — 

" Here sober Duchesses are seen 
Chaste wits, and Critics void of spleen ; 
Physicians fraught with real science, 
And Whigs and Tories in alliance ; 
Poets fulfilling Christian duties, 
Just Lawyers, reasonable Beauties, 
Bishops who preach, and Peers who pay 
And Countesses who seldom play ; 
Learn'd antiquaries, who from college 
Reject the rust, and bring the knowledge ; 
And hear it age^ believe \\. youth 
Polemics, really seeking truth. . . ." 

So, having mustered our company, we must drop 
the curtain and take up the drama of each individual 
player separately. 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 

OFF the great beaten highways of Art there are 
to be found certain little bye-paths and tracts 
which have been trodden by a few feet only ; cor- 
ners where artists have experimented in some new 
material, or cultivated some special skill in crafts- 
manship. In most cases the power of producing 
such works, unconnected with the main movement, 
died with the inventor, or with his Immediate 
disciples. One might mention as examples the 
wax pictures which attained to such perfection in 
the Sixteenth Century ; one might instance the 
paper-mosaics of Mrs Delany, now in the Print 
Room at the British Museum. 

** Ingenious " paper mosaics, Austin Dobson 
calls them : and under the Influence of this adjective 
we go to see them, expecting something of curious 
contrivance, something of patient Industry, some- 
thing of purely local interest. The description of 
them — plants cut out in various coloured papers 
and pasted on a black background — sounds crude 
and inartistic : and we discount contemporary 
praise of these Flora by supposing them a 
fashion of the day. So with a mind wholly 
unprepared, we open the portfolios, and the 
78 




MRS. DELANY 

FROM THE PAINTIXG BY JOHN Oi'IE, R. A. IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 



z 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 79 

beauty that meets the eye comes with a sense of 
shock. 

For these are examples of exquisite artistry ; 
flower-pictures as bold, as delicate, as harmonious 
as a beautiful painting, perfect in grouping and in 
perspective. Yet they achieve an effect outside 
the power of the painter by reason of the fact that 
the plants are necessarily ever so little raised above 
the level of the flat, — that the veinings of the 
leaves and the petals of the blossoms, and even the 
ridgings of the stalks are superimposed, so giving a 
solidity, a depth of thickness, a rotundity not to be 
attained by means of paint. Then the texture of 
fine paper seems to suggest more subtly than paint 
the thin transparency of bloom. This is especially 
the case where white bloom is represented : the 
elder blossom, for instance, is not a dead mass of 
white, but a frail intricacy of vivid lights and pale 
shadows ; pear-blossom, narcissus, thrown on this 
dark background have the radiance of life. The 
vitality of all the plants is indeed amazing — the sap 
seems to be mounting in the juicy stalks, and the 
seed of the groundsel is poised for flight. The 
common wild flowers are perhaps to be regarded as 
the most perfect specimens of Mrs Delany's art ; 
her medium does not admit of absolute success in 
such flowers as the rose, or in large fruits. 

How, in such a medium, she can have attained 
to results of such loveliness, is quite incomprehen- 
sible. It is true that she got her papers from a 



80 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

great variety of sources ; she asked ship captains 
to bring her home specimens from China and the 
East, she obtained from wall-paper manufacturers 
spoiled pieces in which the colours had run, pro- 
ducing extraordinary and unusual tints. But this 
hardly lessens the wonder. Each separate plate 
has its separate and harmonious varieties of green ; 
each flower its myriad delicacies of tinting. 

But when we have done full justice to the extra- 
ordinary artistic gifts of the Flora, we have still to 
admit the claims of the remarkable botanical know- 
ledge displayed, and the marvel of craftsmanship. 
Sir Joshua Reynolds and all the best judges ad- 
mitted her work to be unrivalled in perfection of 
outline, accuracy of shading and perspective, har- 
mony and brilliancy of colouring ; while, at the same 
time, her plants were the admiration of botanists 
such as Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Solander. 
Indeed, Sir Joseph Banks used to say that 
Mrs Delany's representations of flowers ''were 
the only imitations of nature he had ever seen 
from which he could venture to describe botani- 
cally any plant without the least fear of com- 
mitting an error." As to the craftsmanship, to have 
cut these bold curves by eye alo7te, these leaf-edges 
delicate as a hair, these gossamer seed-balls, and 
to have combined them into so perfect a whole, 
demands the sureness of inspiration. 

In Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, 
of which he sends Mrs Delany a new edition, 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 81 

we find the following account of the paper 
mosaics : — 

Mrs Delany, who ** was a lady of excellent sense 
and taste, who painted in oil, and who, at the age 
of seventy-four, invented the art of paper mosaic, 
with which material (coloured) she executed in 
eight years within 20 of 1000 various flowers 
and flowering shrubs, with a precision and truth 
unparalleled. " 

Failing eyesight alone caused her to desist in 
a labour, the joy of which she expresses in verses 
pasted in the first volume of the Flora : — 

" Hail to the happy hour ! when fancy led 
My pensive mind this flow'ry path to tread ; 
And gave me emulation to presume 
With timid art to trace fair nature's bloom : 
To view with awe the great creative power 
That shines confess'd in the minutest flower ; 
With wonder to pursue the glorious line 
And gratefully adore the Hand Divine ! " 

Mrs Delany was an amateur in the best sense 
of the word ; she worked for sheer love of her 
art, without any ulterior motive. Erasmus Darwin 
did her a ludicrous injustice — which he afterwards 
corrected — in his description of the Flora in The 
Botanic Garden. His account suggests the work 
of the amateur in the more degraded sense of the 
word — work composed of inharmonious material, 
inartistically combined. He speaks of ** silken 
flowers" and flaxen tendrils bent round "wiry 
stems " — 
6 



82 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

" Moss creeps below, and flaxen fruit impends, 
Cold Winter views among his realms of snow 
Delany's vegetable statues blow. . . ." 

This Is glaringly inaccurate. For Mrs Delany 
was an artist, not only in paper mosaic, and in 
crayons, and in oils, and in needlework — but in 
Life. She knew how to adapt exquisitely her 
means to her ends, how to subdue herself to 
delicate harmony with her surroundings. In her 
the Eighteenth Century breathes and thrills to 
its finest flower — she exemplifies its best ideals, 
fulfils its highest aspirations. She walks amid 
all its conventions with the freedom of an initiate, 
gracious and confident, and by men and women 
alike she is hailed as its most perfect prototype. 

She had the power of inspiring ardent enthusiasm 
from youth to extreme old age. Her friendships 
were intimate and lasting, and her friends have left 
us pen-pictures of her appearance and character- 
istics, inspired by devoted attachment and shaped in 
terms of fervid eulogy. Mrs Montagu, who knew 
her from early years, expresses her admiration with 
happy extravagance. In 1742 Mrs Montagu wrote 
to Mrs Donnellan, '' As for Pen (Mrs Delany) she 
is not a daughter of Eve, but of the collateral 
branch of Enoch, who walked as an angel before 
the children of men. She is a perfect seraphim, 
all fine music and pure spirit." And in 1747, when 
Mrs Delany was forty-seven years old — she was 
born in 1700 — Mrs Donnellan speaks of ''the 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 83 

bloom she still enjoys, the modest sprightllness 
of her eyes, the shining delicacy of her hair, the 
sweetness of her smile, and the pleasing air of her 
whole countenance." 

If Mrs Montagu values Mrs Delany for her 
spiritual intellect, and Mrs Donnellan praises her 
beauty ; it is by her perfection of high breeding that 
Edmund Burke believes she will be remembered 
through the ages. He is reported to have said of 
her that : 

"She was a truly great woman of fashion, that 
she was not the woman of fashion of the present 
age, but that she was the highest h-ed woman in the 
world, and the woman of fashion of all ages ; that 
she was high-bred, great in every instance, and 
would continue fashionable in all ages." 

And when we add Dean Swift's testimony to her 
simplicity and candour, we have certainly material 
for a delicate and charming portrait. 

'* . . . A pernicious error prevails here among 
the men," he writes in 1734, " that it is the duty of 
your sex to be fools in every article except what is 
merely domestic, and to do the ladies justice, there 
are very few of them without a good share of 
that heresy except upon one article, that they have 
as little regard for family business as for the 
improvement of their minds ! 

*' I have had for some time a design to write 
against this heresy, but have now laid those thoughts 
aside, for fear of making both sexes my enemies ; 



84 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

however, if you will come over to my assistance, I 
will carry you about among our adversaries, and 
dare them to produce one instance where your want 
of ignorance makes you affected, pretending, con- 
ceited, disdainful, endeavouring to speak like a 
scholar with twenty more faults objected by them- 
selves, their lovers, or their husbands. But I fear 
your case is desperate, for I know you never laugh 
at a jest before you understand it . . ." 

A compliment worth deserving truly, which gives 
us the master-key to Mrs Delany's character. 

The qualities for which her contemporaries praise 
her are qualities that make the charm of women 
through all the ages. But her contemporaries were 
unconsciously more prone to admire her, because 
she possessed, as well, traits of character linking 
her distinctively with her century. To begin with, 
she confined herself to practising arts accounted 
purely feminine ; and in the second place, she 
always manifested a strong devotion for the 
goddess Propriety. 

Mrs Delany's artistic enterprise was of the most 
varied character. She was a painter of consider- 
able ability, doing copies of the Old Masters both in 
crayons and in oils ; she had extraordinary skill in 
needlework of every sort, making her own designs, 
and often taking her needlework pictures direct 
from nature. The Eighteenth Century presses 
more closely upon us when we read of the other 
arts in which she excelled. We seem to see the 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 85 

time, very far off, haloed in an opaque radiance of 
shell-work. For Mrs Delany made shell cornices, 
shell candelabras, and shell lustres which we cannot 
help feeling would be an anomaly in any room 
except one specially built for them. She executed 
chimney-boards, too, that excited much praise, 
figures (often Etruscan) and Arabesques cut out in 
coloured papers and laid on a black ground. Mrs 
Delany tells of many other crafts that employed 
the leisure of the ladies of her time. She writes of 
the Duchess of Portland's daughters turning ivory, 
and of the Duchess herself making *'a bunch of 
barberis turned in amber," and an ear of barley, ^*the 
corns amber, the stalk ivory, the beard tortoiseshell." 
Spinning, too, was still in fashion, and Mrs Delany 
in her later life presented to Queen Charlotte a 
spinning-wheel with an inscription in verse. 

Now it is clear that Mrs Delany's gifts might 
well be regarded in the light of mere graceful 
accomplishments. The undoubted originality which 
she brought to bear upon the work was unresented 
because kept within strictly defined limits. She 
never came into competition with men, and there- 
fore remained inoffensive ; she never exhibited ; 
her pictures were painted as gifts for her friends or 
for the adornment of her own house ; and the chief 
purpose served by her talents was to endear her 
further to those who knew her, and to add a zest 
and a beauty to her life. And here we have one 
secret of the admiration she aroused. 



86 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Another secret is to be found in her worship of 
Propriety. None of her contemporaries offered up 
incense in its honour with a more perfect grace than 
Mrs Delany. The very term Propriety savours of the 
Eighteenth Century; to-day it wears an old-fashioned 
aspect and seems skimpy with the primness of 
musty didactic tomes. But to Mrs Delany Pro- 
priety represented something stabler than conven- 
tion, something wider than correctness — she seems 
to have regarded it rather as a fine and exquisite 
sensitiveness to unwritten laws which had their 
remote roots in the eternal verities. The homage, 
often unconscious, which she paid to propriety, 
established a harmonious relation between herself 
and her environment, so that we see her moving 
with graceful adaptability through every circum- 
stance of her life. Neither did this worship of hers 
confine her to a narrow oroove. Her interests and 
affections were wide, and her outlook upon life 
tolerant. She was to some extent a critic of men 
and manners, and her letters are full of good- 
humoured allusions to contemporary idiosyncracies. 
Elizabeth Robinson, in a letter dated 1740 to Mrs 
Donnellan, writes : '' I take Penny (Mrs Delany) 
too from her business of doing good in this world, 
to her speculative employment of despising its 
vanities^ 

So it is that we find frequent allusion in Mrs 
Delany's correspondence to the extravagant fashions 
of the day, *' the hoops of enormous size," and the 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 87 

" vast winkers to their heads " which make people 
look like "blown bladders." "Ye wasp-waisted 
ladies " give occasion for her to expatiate on the 
"folly (indeed wickedness^ of "strait laceing." 
She describes a dress worn by Lady Huntingdon 
at the Prince of Wales' birthday party, 1 739, — " Her 
petticoat was black velvet embroidered with 
chenille, the pattern a large stone vase filled with 
ramping flowers that spread almost over a breadth 
of the petticoat ... it was a most laboured piece 
of finery, the pattern much properer for a stucco 
staircase than the apparel of a lady — a mere shadow 
that tottered at every step she took under the 
load." It is curious to reflect that the wearer of 
this dress was the foundress of the Huntingdonian 
sect of Methodists. Gaming, too, gives cause for 
Mrs Delany's strenuous disapproval — " A vice of 
such deep dye at present," she calls it, " that 
nothing within my memory comes up to it ! The 
bite is more malignant than that of a mad dog, and 
has all the effects of it." The vast sums lost by 
ladies are peculiarly galling to her. "It mortifies 
my sex's pride to see women expose themselves so 
much to the contempt of men, over whom I think, 
from nature and education, if they were just to their 
own dignity, they have so many advantages." 

But of necessity, the Woman of Propriety is 
opposed to new ideas, which threaten the estab- 
lished order ; and Rousseau appeared to Mrs 
Delany dangerous. In 1766, when Rousseau was 



88 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

in England writing his Confessions, Mrs Delany's 
brother became acquainted with the reformer, and 
to her niece Mrs Delany writes : " I am glad you 
have seen the Rousseau, he is a genius and a curi- 
osity, and his works extremely ingenious, . . ." 
but she goes on to add, ''under the guise and pomp 
of virtue he does advance very erroneous and 
unorthodox sentiments." The following quotation 
is significant of Mrs Delany's honesty, and of that 
curious but very general attitude which considers it 
a virtue to keep the mind locked up in the darkness 
of a little room. 

'' I own I am not a fair disputant on this subject 
from my own knowledge of his works, as I avoid 
engaging in books from whose subtlety I might 
perhaps receive some prejudice, and I always take 
an alarm when virtue in general terms is the idol, 
without the support of religion, the only foundation 
that can be our security to build upon." 

Dr Johnson was Mrs Elizabeth Carter's favourite 
author ; we will not do Mrs Delany the injustice 
of saying that she preferred above all others, Mrs 
Chapone ; yet Mrs Delany could write, with 
reference to the *' Letters on the Improvement of 
the Mind," *' I know of no book for a young 
person (next to the Bible) more entertaining and 
edifying if read with due attention." In her 
seventy-eighth year Mrs Delany wrote an Essay 
on Propriety for the future use of her grand-niece, 
then six years old. 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 89 

"... Do not, my dear child, be startled at the 
awful word advice, for I only mean to recommend 
to your intimate acquaintance a lady who will 
guard you against the want of it. . . . This friend 
I present to your regard is never presuming, pert, 
or conceited, but humble, modest, and unaffected, 
attentive to everything that can improve her 
understanding or polish her manners. . . . All her 
votarys so truly respect, and are so sensible of her 
value, that they never forsake her. Her name is 
Propriety." 

Mary Granville, afterwards Mrs Delany, was 
born in 1700 of good family, but at the death of 
Queen Anne her father experienced a reverse of 
fortune, retired to the country, and became par- 
tially dependent on the bounty of his elder 
brother. Lord Lansdowne. When Mary was 
seventeen Lord and Lady Lansdowne asked her 
to spend the winter with them at their country 
seat, Longleat, and there she met and was com- 
pelled to marry an elderly Cornish gentleman 
named Pendarves. As her second husband, Dr 
Delany, puts it : *' She was sacrificed to family 
interest, to which she was prevailed upon to submit 
through the tyranny of kindness (as she herself 
used to express it), and her unlimited generosity 
of her love towards that family." In 1740 Mrs 
Delany wrote an autobiography under feigned 
names for her lifelong friend, the Duchess of 
Portland, in which she tells how she saw Gromio 



90 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

(Mr Pendarves) for the first time after he had 
spent a long rainy day on horseback, " . . . the 
poor, old, dripping, almost drowned Gromio was 
brought into the room, like Hob out of the well, 
his wig, his coat, his dirty boots, his large unwieldy 
person and his crimson countenance were all sub- 
jects of great mirth and observation to me." She 
describes him later on as "altogether a person 
more disgusting than engaging." 

Her married life was unhappy ; her husband, 
though fond of her, was of a jealous, sullen dis- 
position, and later when his fortunes became 
impaired he was hardly ever sober, and frequently 
had to be led by two servants to bed at seven or 
eight o'clock in the morning. 

In 1724 Mr Pendarves died, leaving his wife 
only a few hundred pounds a year. During the 
first five years of her widowhood, she was courted 
by a young nobleman, Lord Baltimore, by whom 
she appears to have been greatly attracted. But, 
unaccountably, after declaring that he had loved 
her for five years, he left her, and almost immedi- 
ately married another. An admirer of a different 
stamp was found in John Wesley, with whom, at 
this time, she had a correspondence. He was then 
twenty-eight years of age, and did not begin field 
preaching till four years later. His biographer, 
Mr Tyerman, is clearly of opinion that if Mrs 
Pendarves had not gone to Ireland, she might 
have married the leader of Methodism. 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 91 

In 1 73 1 she and her friend, Mrs Donnellan, 
were invited to stay with the sister of the latter, 
Mrs Clayton, wife of the Bishop of Killala. For 
this expedition Mrs Pendarves bought '' a gown 
and petticoat ; 'tis a very fine blue satin, sprigged 
all over with white, and the petticoat facings and 
endings broidered in the manner of a trimming 
wove in the silk. This suit of clothes cost me 
sixteen pounds." 

The visit to Ireland proved eventful. Mrs 
Pendarves met her future husband, Dr Delany, 
afterwards Dean of Down ; and at his house Dean 
Swift. 

One of the most interesting studies of the 
Eighteenth Century is the relationship of its 
beautiful or brilliant women to its famous men. 
In no other age have men seemed to depend so 
exclusively for their inspiration on the incense of 
women's admiration, and in no other age have 
women been so flattered by condescending correc- 
tion of their ignorances and by good-humoured 
tolerance of their weaknesses and foibles. To 
make the situation bearable, it was necessary for 
the men to have considerable advantage in years 
over the women, and this also contributed to the 
purely intellectual character of the bond. Though, 
indeed, even girls preferred for their husbands men 
who had reached a sober maturity ; Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, in spite of her father's oppo- 
sition, insisted on marrying the grave Wortley 



92 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Montagu, many years older than herself; Eliza- 
beth Robinson chose Edward Montagu, her 
senior by twenty-nine years ; and Mary Granville, 
forced at the age of seventeen into union with a 
man of fifty-nine, took as her second husband Dr 
Delany, who had had sixteen years more experi- 
ence of life. Love matches were regarded as 
standing a little outside the bounds of propriety 
— as showing an inadvisable abandonment of the 
established restraints ; and while Gallantry played 
a conspicuous part in every detail of daily inter- 
course, Romance was regarded as a tramp out of 
a wild and undesirable world, whose rough attire, 
smelling of the fields, made him unfit for presenta- 
tion in any drawing-room. The friendships between 
men and women of this century, though expressed 
in phrases of the most grandiloquent adoration, 
were, as a rule, marked by perfect decorum. Dr 
Johnson alternately bullied and petted his hosts of 
worshippers, who gained a reflected glory from 
his lofty condescension ; and Mrs Pendarves was 
flattered that Dean Swift should deign to correct 
her English and to approve her method of writing 
and expression. 

**The Dean of St Patrick's was there," she 
writes of one of the Dublin parties, ''in very 
good humour ; he calls himself ' my master,' and 
corrects me when I speak bad English or do 
not pronounce my words distinctly. I wish he 
lived in England ; I should not only have a 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 93 

great deal of entertainment from him, but im- 
provement." 

Here is her description of Dean Swift : — 

*' Swift is a very odd companion (if that expres- 
sion is not too familiar for so extraordinary a 
genius) ; he talks a great deal and does not require 
many answers ; he has infinite spirits, and says 
abundance of good things in his common way of 
discourse." 

The correspondence between Mrs Pendarves and 
Dean Swift after she had left Ireland is of much 
interest. On her side there is a self-consciousness, 
an effort at fine writing, which is entirely absent 
from all her other letters. We fancy her brooding 
over her sheet of paper to find phrases, labouring 
to be sprightly, yet tormented with uncertainty as 
to how her efforts will be received. His letters 
are written in a like inflated style, but to him we 
feel that the style is natural ; his is the practised 
pen that has been taught to gallop straight, and 
to take walls and hedges and ditches without hesi- 
tation. The mentor is strong in these letters, but 
it is the mentor in a gracious and playful mood ; 
yet they are already overshadowed by the pathos 
of the coming tragedy — the shadow of the ap- 
proaching cloud that is to dim one of the most 
brilliant intellects of the age. 

Pathetic reading these letters of Dean Swift's 
make, with their complaints of giddiness and deaf- 
ness. '* I am grown sickly, weak, lean, forgetful, 



94 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

peevish, spiritless," he writes. He speaks, too, of 
his poverty, and the luxuries that have now become 
a necessity to him. ..." I cannot make shifts 
to lie rough, and be undone by starving in scanty 
lodgings, without horses, servants, or conveniences, 
as I used to do in London." But here is a sentence 
that has the ring of genuine regard and something 
of the old spirit : — 

"Well, madam, pray God bless you w^herever 
you go or reside ! May you be ever as you are, 
agreeable to every Killala curate and Dublin dean, 
for I disdain to mention temporal folks without 
gown or cassock." 

Dr Delany had evidently made a strong impres- 
sion upon Mrs Pendarves. She liked him from 
the first. "His wit and learning were to me his 
meanest praise," she writes in 1740; "the excel- 
lence of his heart, his humanity, benevolence, 
charity, and generosity, his tenderness, affection, 
and friendly zeal, gave me a higher opinion of him 
than of any other man I had ever conversed with." 
She alludes to him several times in her letters 
to Dean Swift. In April, 1743, Dr Delany made 
a proposal for her hand, having married and lost 
his wife since Mrs Pendarves was in Ireland ; and 
they were married that year. 

After her second marriage, Mrs Delany lived, 
during the greater part of her husband's life, in 
Ireland, at Holly Mount, near Down, and at 
Delville, a mile from Dublin, a tiny property 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 95 

which had been laid out by Dr Delany himself. 
Everything was on a scale of extreme minutiae, 
as witness these lines on Delville in its early 
days, attributed to Swift, but probably written by 
Sheridan : — 

" You scarce upon the borders enter, 
Before you're at the very centre. 
A single crow can make it night 
When o'er your farm she takes her flight. 
Yet, in this narrow compass, we 
Observe a vast variety ; 
Both walks, walls, meadows and parterres 
Windows and doors and rooms and stairs. . . ." 

A razor, the rhyme goes on, would shave both 
you and your meadow, and as for the walk about 
your kitchen garden, '' a snail creeps round it in 
a minute. ..." 

" In short, in all your boasted seat, 
There^s nothing but yourself thafs great I " 

The Lord Lieutenant and Lady Chesterfield 
visited the Delanys at Delville in 1745. 

Her second marriage appears to have been very 
happy. All the allusious to Dr Delany show him 
as a man of charm and sweetness. " In his imagina- 
tion I could perceive ihepoe^/' Mrs Montagu writes, 
" in his reflections the philosopher, and in both the 
divine!' His love for his wife is well exemplified 
in a ** portait " of her which he wrote, figuring her 
under the feigned name of Maria. It was intended 



96 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

for publication in a paper of his, The Humanist, 
which ran to fifteen numbers ; but Mrs Delany 
would not allow its appearance in print. Like a 
true lover, Dr Delany begins by extolling Maria's 
gifts of mind and her qualities of heart, and only 
afterwards dilates on the charms of her appearance. 

*' With a person finely proportioned she had a 
most lovely face of great sweetness, set off with a 
head of fair hair, shining and naturally curled ; with 
a complexion which nothing could out-do or equal, 
in which, to speak in the language of poets, * the 
lilies and the roses contended for the mastery.* 
Her eyes were bright — indeed, I never could tell 
what colour they were of, but to the best of my 
judgment they were what Solomon called " dove's 
eyes " ; and she is almost the only woman I ever 
saw whose lips were scarlet, and her bloom beyond 
expression. The sweetness arising from united 
graces was guarded by a dignity which kept all 
admirers in awe, insomuch that she was the woman 
in the world to whom the fine description of 
Solomon could best be applied : ' Fair as the 
vtoon ! clear as the sun ! but terrible as an army 
with banners' " 

Though somewhat ecclesiastic in tone, there is a 
genuine ring about this portrait of Dr Delany's, a 
power of sympathy and a freshness which makes us 
feel that, despite his years (he was seventy-three 
when he wrote the above), the Doctor was never old. 

Delany was an intimate friend of Swift's, and 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 97 

after Swift's death he defended his friend against 
certain imputations in the Observations he (Delany) 
published upon Lord Orrery's Re7narks on Swift. 
Midway between the two books — Delany 's showing 
the more favourable, and Orrery's the less favour- 
able, aspect of Swift's character — Dr Johnson 
suggests the truth may lie. 

With regard to the Irish of that time, Dr John- 
son has a significant saying : " The Irish mix 
better with the English than the Scotch do ; their 
language is nearer to English, as a proof of which 
they succeed very well as players, which Scotchmen 
do not. Then, sir, they have not that extreme 
nationality which we find in the Scotch." This 
has the shallowness of many of Johnson's observa- 
tions, but it tends to show that the prejudice against 
the Irish was not so strong as the prejudice against 
the Scotch. 

Dr Johnson was ardent in his desire for the 
study of the Gaelic. Writing in 1757 to Charles 
O'Connor, author of" Dissertations on the History 
of Ireland," Dr Johnson says : ^' I have long 
wished that the Irish language Avere cultivated. 
Ireland is know^n by tradition to have been once 
the seat of piety and learning ; and surely it would 
be very acceptable to all those who are curious 
either in the original of nations, or the affinities of 
language, to be further informed of the revolution 
of a people so ancient and once so illustrious." 

Mrs Delany does not appear to have remarked 
7 



98 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

any striking contrast between the Society of Dublin 
and the Society of London. She seems, however, 
to have derived more enjoyment from the reunions 
at Delville when she was first in Ireland, than from 
any of the assemblies in London before or after. 
**I recollect no entertainment with so much plea- 
sure as that what I received from that company." 
Travelling in Ireland, she comments on the fact 
that London fashions have penetrated to remote 
parts of County Down: ** The dairymaids wear 
large hoops and velvet hoods instead of the round 
tight petticoat and straw hat, and there is as much 
foppery introduced in the food as in the dress — the 
pure simplicity of ye country is quite lost ! " How- 
ever, she describes in another place the extreme 
poverty of the Irish peasants : " The poverty of 
the people as I have passed through the country 
has made my heart ache ; I never saw greater 
appearance of misery ; they live in great extremes, 
either /r^^^^/j/ or wretchedly T 

One of Mrs Delany's chief claims to remembrance 
is that at that early date she did all in her power to 
promote Irish industries. Anticipating the action 
of Lady Aberdeen, who founded the Irish Indus- 
tries Association in 1886, Mrs Delany succeeded in 
making Irish poplins fashionable at the Vice-Regal 
Court. " On the Prince of Wales' birthday," she 
writes in 1745 (when every lady was bound to wear 
an entirely new costume), '* there appeared at Court 
a great number of Irish stuffs. Lady Chesterfield 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 99 

was dressed in one, and I had the secret satisfaction 
of knowing myself to have been the cause. . . . 
The poor weavers are starving, all trade has met 
with a great check this year." We read also that 
Mrs Delany fitted up a little room at Delville, hung 
it with blue-and-white paper, *' and intend a bed of 
blue-and-white linen — all Irish manufacttire' (the 
italics are hers). She followed the Irish fashion of 
having a harper attached to her house, Holly 
Mount, near Down, '' who plays a great variety of 
tunes very well ; he plays to us at our meals and 
to me whilst I am drawing." She must have 
known something of Irish harpers, for she mentions 
Carolan's lines — Carolan, the last of the native 
Irish bards whose compositions gave celebrity to 
their author. He died in 1738. In the Eighteenth 
Century the bardic system in Ireland finally broke 
up with all its minute and intricate rules established 
by age-long precedent ; and in the new freedom a 
whole flock of Gaelic lyrics found wing, whose 
singing makes, according to Dr Douglas Hyde, 
the most happy period of Gaelic literature. But 
of this movement Dublin and Mrs Delany seemed 
wholly unaware. Yet Gaelic was to make its first 
fiercely-disputed entry into English but a little later 
on in Macpherson's translation of Ossian. 

Dr Delany died at Bath in 1768, and Mrs Delany 
returned to London. No period of her life is more 
attractive than her long widowhood. She was now 
sixty-eight ; she had a house in London where she 



100 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

entertained, the Thatched House, St James's Street, 
which stood on the site of the present Conservative 
Club. Here she gave receptions and dehghtful 
small dinner-parties. Then she spent long visits 
at Bulstrode with her friend the Duchess of Port- 
land — Bulstrode, in Buckinghamshire, "that melan- 
choly monument of Dutch magnificence " as Horace 
Walpole calls it. 

Mrs Delany is acclaimed by Fanny Burney one 
of the '' old wits," and her parties were emphatically 
of the Blue-Stocking order — they were parties 
organised for intellectual conversation. Judging 
from Mrs Delany's character, and her own expres- 
sions on the subject, we conclude that the conversa- 
tion was more harmonious, more graceful, more 
perfect within narrow limits than that at most of 
the other assemblies. Fireworks and the " tower- 
ing sublime " were alike antipathetic to Mrs Delany. 
She preferred the '' salutary gentle dew of common 
sense." Yet she lacked neither wit nor learning. 
She was indeed possessed of a considerable amount 
of scientific knowledge. Her extraordinary grasp 
of botany has already been referred to, and she 
collected fossils and studied mineralogy with some 
thoroughness. She writes from Bulstrode, ** I can- 
not tell you how busy I have been in examining the 
varieties of stalactites, selenites, ludus helmontii, 
etc.," and she also made careful drawings of the 
crystalline forms of minerals. But she pursued her 
scientific studies, as she pursued her artistic enter- 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 101 

prise, for sheer delight ; and in her old age her 
gaiety of spirit is as attractive as her capacity for 
devotion, her sweet dignity and her vitality. We 
find her extemporising riddles for the amusement of 
her friends, or writing doggerel to do pleasure to 
her beloved grandniece, whom she practically 
adopted when the child was seven. No wonder 
her contemporaries loved her. On first meeting 
her Hannah More describes her as ''a living library 
of knowledge ; and time, which has so highly 
matured her judgment, has taken very little from 
her graces or her liveliness." 

Mrs Walsingham writes her some graceful verses 
on her eightieth birthday, and Mrs Chapone ad- 
dresses her in this exalted strain : — 

*' Give me leave then ... to entreat you to 
communicate the secret of preserving all the ingeni- 
ous warmth of hearty all the sensibility and gener- 
osity of youth with all the dignity and prudence 
which belong to age. ..." 

Mrs Delany's relations to George III. and Queen 
Charlotte were those of close personal friendship. 

It was at Bulstrode that she met the King and 
Queen. They were in the habit of coming over 
frequently from Windsor to see the Duchess of 
Portland (now the Dowager Duchess), arriving 
sometimes informally after six, the King driving 
the Queen '' in a low chaise with a pair of white 
horses " — sometimes in state in the middle of the 
day. 



102 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

The King always distinguished Mrs Delany by 
his particular attention, fetching chairs for her, and 
placing a screen before the fire that her eyes might 
not suffer by the glare. Mrs Delany's brother, 
Bernard Granville, had been a friend of Handel's, 
and possessed a fine MS. collection of Handel's 
music : the King in his own hand wrote to Mrs 
Delany asking if he might see certain of the 
volumes, and the whole thirty-eight were sent 
for his inspection. Of the Queen Mrs Delany 
writes, "Her manners are most engaging ; there is 
so much dignity and affability blended, that it is 
hard to say whether one's respect or love predomin- 
ates." Charlotte seems to have had a genuine 
affection for Mrs Delany, and a strong admiration 
for her chenille-work and her paper mosaic work. 
On one occasion the Queen put into her hands a 
most beautiful pocket-case of white satin worked 
with gold spangles, fitted with knives, scissors, 
bodkins, etc., and containing a letter in the Queen's 
hand. She gave Mrs Delany a lock of her hair ; 
and there are many letters in terms as affectionate 
as the following : — 

** My dearest Mrs Delany, 

*' If coming to me will not fatigue your 
spirits too much, I shall receive you with open 
arms, and am 

'' Your affectionate friend, 

*' Charlotte." 




QUEEN CHARLOTTE 

FROM THE PAINTING BY THOMAS GAINSBOKOUGH. R. A. . AT SOUTH KENSINGTON" 



MRS DELANY (1700-1788) 103 

After the death of the Duchess of Portland in 
1 785, the King and the Queen presented Mrs Delany 
with a house at Windsor, now in the possession of 
Mr A. C. Benson. '' But," to quote Lady Llanover, 
the editor of her correspondence, " with that deHcate 
consideration which characterised all their actions 
towards her, they gave at the same time ;^300 a 
year . . . and to prevent even the appearance of a 
pension . . . the Queen used regularly to bring 
her the half year's amount in a pocket-book when 
she made her a visit at this house." The King 
and the Queen visited Mrs Delany almost daily, 
and here Fanny Burney's momentous meeting with 
Royalty took place. 

Mrs Delany made the acquaintance of Fanny 
Burney in 1783 through the offices of Mrs Chapone 
at Mrs Delany's house in St James' Place. Fanny 
Burney writes of Mrs Delany : " She is still tall, 
though some of her height may be lost ; not much, 
however, for she is remarkably upright. She has 
no remains of beauty in feature, but in countenance 
I never but once saw more, and that was in my 
sweet maternal grandmother. Benevolence, soft- 
ness, piety and gentleness are all resident in her 
face. . . ." 

Mrs Delany's connections by descent very much 
resent the attitude of Fanny Burney to Mrs Delany 
in her Diary, and especially the imputation that Mrs 
Delany had been supported by the Duchess of 
Portland, and that Fanny Burney had helped Mrs 



104 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Delany to sort her letters and papers. Such gush- 
ing sentences as the following in the Diary would 
very conceivably irritate Mrs Delany 's relatives : 
" Soothing Mrs Delany — sweet soul — folded me in 
her arms and wept over my shoulder . . . the sole 
satisfaction of my present life, which consists in the 
time it allows me to spend with this earthly angel." 

In no relation of life was Mrs Delany's exquisite 
sense of Propriety better exemplified than in her 
attitude towards Royalty. She allowed herself to 
feel the sincerest gratification at the marks of 
esteem and regard that were conferred upon her, 
but she bore herself with a perfect dignity, and with 
a most just sense of what was fitting. Her estimate 
of the King and Queen was perhaps a little biassed, 
but it was neither servile nor fawning. It was the 
judgment of a loyal subject eager to see only what 
was good. 

Mrs Delany died in 1788. 



PRECURSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES 
OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS 

TTANNAH MORE is bold in her heraldry. 
-^ -■- The Bas Bleu are sprung from no unworthy 
stock. She does not stop to prove the descent, 
but merely indicates with a sweep of the hand the 
intellectual royalty of the race. Whose, think you, 
were the first Bas Bleu parties ? Those of Aspasia 
at Athens, 

" Where Socrates unbending sat 
With Alcibiades in chat. . . ." 

With whom else of noble rank can the Blue-Stock- 
ings claim kin? With what other famous enter- 
tainments shall they trace connection ? With the 
feasts of Lucullus, which were distinguished by — 

" Scipids lucky hit 
Pompey's bon mot or Ccesar^s wit ! 
I shall not stop to dwell on these," 

the poetess goes on, 

" But be as epic as I please 
And plunge at once in medias res. . . ." 

We will not stop to dwell on these either. It is, 
in fact, wiser to be a little vague in drawing such 

los 



106 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKIISIGS 

far-stretching genealogical trees. Our lines are 
perhaps a trifle fanciful until we come down to the 
Seventeenth Century ; here, indeed, we stand on 
firmer ground, but Hannah More does not show at 
all the same eagerness to acknowledge relationship 
with her more immediate and more certain ances- 
tors ; indeed, she goes out of her way to speak 
with unkindness of the Hotel Rambouillet, that 
mother of Salons, which flourished in the reign of 
Louis XIV. and inaugurated a social power in 
France, lasting well into the Nineteenth Century. 
The reproach that Hannah More brings against 
the Hotel Rambouillet is characteristic of her cen- 
tury and of England. She complains of an assembly 
whose raison detre was brilliance, wit, the frothy 
essence of intellect, that it lacked common sense 
and simplicity. Perhaps it was a too strong in- 
fusion of this somewhat ponderous ingredient of 
common-sense that made our social admixture so 
much heavier than that of our neighbours. But 
Hannah More preferred the English recipe : — 

" Oh ! how unUke the wit that fell, 
Rambouillet ! at thy quaint hotel ; 
Where point, and turn, and equivoque, 
Distorted every word they spoke ! 
All so intolerably bright 
Plain common-sense was put to flight. . . . 
No votive altar smok'd to thee 
Chaste Queen, divine Simplicity ! 
But forc'd conceit, which ever fails. 
And stiff antithesis prevails. . . ." 



PRECURSORS & CONTEMPORARIES 107 

These are hard sayings of a Salon that drew like 
a magnet the great men of a great age — that 
numbered Bossuet, Moliere, Pascal, Corneille, 
Fenelon, Boileau, Racine, La Rochefoucauld, 
Bourdaloue, and Madame de Sevigne among its 
guests. Yet the enthusiasm for learning and for 
wit that flamed in Seventeenth-century France is 
remembered to-day chiefly by the absurdities of its 
most foolish disciples. Hannah More's Bas Bleu has 
not conferred immortality upon these, but Moliere's 
delightful comedy, Les Femmes Savantes. The 
learning of these ladies consists in an unbounded 
enthusiasm for Greek, of which they know nothing, 
and for '' poetry " of the most doggerel description. 
They are so fastidious about the purity of language 
that they dismiss their servant for a solecism, and 
want the notary to refine his legal terms. Learned 
ladies, it seems, suppose that every man who ap- 
proaches them is in love with them ; the supposi- 
tion of all others most calculated to make them 
ridiculous. But Moliere, being a genius, is not 
unjust. He makes the domestic sister quite as 
disagreeable and spiteful as the learned one ; and 
the cowardly husband, whose opinions on marriage 
he can only get expressed through the mouth of 
the dismissed Martine, is a more despicable 
character than the lofty Philaminte, his wife. 
One can imagine that Moliere himself enjoyed 
the inconsistencies of Clitandre's Speech on 
Women : — 



108 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

"... J'aime que souvent, aux questions qu'on fait, 
Elle sache ignorer les choses qu'elle salt ; 
De son etude enfin je veux qu'elle se cache 
Et qu'elle ait du savoir sans vouloir qu'on le sache." 

But, indeed, the view expressed in these lines 
was seriously held by the majority of men and 
women in the Eighteenth Century. Does not that 
shrewd observer of men and things, Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, say with reference to the educa- 
tion of her grand-daughter, " The second caution 
to be given her (and which is most absolutely 
necessary) is to conceal whatever learning she 
attains, with as much solicitude as she would hide 
crookedness or lameness ; the parade of it can only 
serve to draw on her the envy and consequently 
the most inveterate hatred of all he and she fools, 
which will certainly be three parts in four of all her 
acquaintances." Here we find the germ of Carlyle's 
much quoted dictum. 

The Salon flourished for a brief period in 
Eighteenth-century England : it attracted most of 
the chief personages of the age ; it captured contem- 
porary imagination. But the Salon in Eighteenth- 
century France was an institution of far greater 
power and influence ; no mere accessory to life, but 
life itself; an element of mental and emotional 
intoxication, seething with new ideas, stimulating 
wild speculation, possessing all the graces of that 
old regime, the most polished in the world, and play- 
ing delicately for decades with strange impossible 



PRECURSORS & CONTEMPORARIES 109 

theories as if they were bubble-balls, instead of deadly 
bombs that were to shatter in one vast devastation 
all this frail beauty of autumn-coloured decay. 

For it is always autumn in Eighteenth-century 
France — the France preceding the Revolution — 
the France of the Salons. Or if late summer as 
sometimes pictured by Watteau, it is a summer 
threatened by the gloom of destroying thunder-cloud. 
But autumn is the prevailing emotion — the Salons 
themselves are dim with autumn's dull gold, the 
chairs reflect glints of a brighter ore, the tapestries 
are faint with cinnamon tones. We feel the haze 
of autumn, in which individual hues gain soft colour 
and distinction ; we are aware of a wit that has lost 
its grosser elements, and is refined to the keenest 
point, just before the verge of shrivelling ; we re- 
cognise that combination, so peculiar to autumn, of 
misty bloom and crackling sharpness, — the purple 
and violet exhalations that conceal a slow decay 
and the tenuous brittle glory that precedes death. 
True, there is the vigour of a fresh life underneath, 
— the fuel, Decay, '' quickens the fires of renewal " — 
but it needs the seer to remember the future spring 
in the pause of this autumnal hush. It is to the 
past spring that our eyes turn : — 

"Light loves that woke with spring 
This autumn afternoon 
Beholds meandering 
Still to the strains of Spring." 

It is easy to imagine the edged perfections, the 



no FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

quick surprises, the brilliant contrasts, the subtle 
tints and the smouldering passions stimulated by 
this heavy overcharged atmosphere, which subdued 
into harmony with its own pale magnificence all 
fierce speculations and violent theories, as the 
autumn subdues in its primrose-coloured copses the 
black and red of spotted bramble-leaf. Eighteenth- 
century England, exuberant and coarse with 
vigour — a little clumsy even with excess of life — 
verging upon riotous self-consciousness — could not 
hope suddenly to develop a wit produced by cen- 
turies of selection, or to reveal a brilliance of conver- 
sation that was the consummation of infinite leisure, 
or to bring forth out of its homely common-sense, a 
birth of imagination, fantastic, daring, various, that, 
like the genius in the Arabian tale, was to take 
gigantic shape of reality and change the world. 
We have already seen that a shrewd criticism of 
life, and a sober criticism of books, formed the 
staple of English conversation, diversified by 
sagacious, witty, and apposite sayings. The didactic 
element, too, was also always in the background. We 
may indeed roughly put the difference between 
French and English conversation in the Eighteenth 
Century under a physical symbol by contrasting 
two characteristic figures of the age — the bulky 
form of Dr Johnson — him of the robust 
sense and sledge-hammer moral pronouncements, 
with the thin delicate wiriness of Voltaire, 
poignant in wit, polished to attenuation, his 




MADAME GEOFFRIN 

FROAI THE PORTRAIT BY CHARDIX IX THE .-MUSEE DE MOXTPEI.LIER 



PRECURSORS k CONTEMPORARIES 111 

shining quicksilver spite dancing through all his 
work. 

The homely thistle, sturdy and spiky, indifferent 
as to soil, does not require cultivation : but the 
rare hot-house plant must have the most delicate 
care. The French Salonieres expended extraordin- 
ar}^ pains on the nurture of their Salons — it was 
Madame Geoffrin who invented the striking saying, 
" II ne faut pas laisser croitre Therbe sur le chemin 
de Tamitie." The French hostesses thouo^ht no 
trouble too great for the end of retaining old friends, 
and attracting and attaching new ones. They had 
sympathy to give — overflowing, abundant ; sym- 
pathy — intellectual, emotional ; sympathy — that was 
to be counted upon all hours of the day, every day 
of the year, for years successively : for fashionable 
life centred in the capital, and Paris was France. 
We English gave no such heart-whole devotion to 
our Salons. They were never over here the centre 
and the source of life ; they hardly interrupted the 
daily routine. The Blue-Stocking hostesses were 
largely absorbed by other interests and responsi- 
bilities ; Mrs Vesey spent most of the year near 
Dublin ; Mrs Montagu had several country houses 
and her coal mines to attend to ; Mrs Thrale was 
constantly at Bath and other watering-places. 
English society lived, as now, a great portion of 
the year in the country, and ties had to be re-knotted 
at frequent intervals with consequent little rough- 
nesses. It was impossible, with so many interrup- 



112 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

tions, to have those flowing and unbroken intimacies 
and friendships that characterised the French 
Salons, those confidences and understandings born 
of the fulness of time : social intercourse in England 
was necessarily more haphazard and spasmodic. 

The power of the French Salon was no doubt 
largely due to its stability ; for its habitues the 
doors always stood open. Here came the phil- 
osophers, the poets, the painters, the writers, the 
encyclopaedists; later on, to Madame Roland, the 
politicians ; later still, to Madame Recamier, the 
worshippers of her beauty. Here men met on 
neutral ground, flashing theory and epigram ; 
controlled by the pervading sweetness, or the 
happy tact, or the gay sanity of the ruling spirit 
— the hostess. No need here for artificial arrange- 
ment of guests, for circles, and squares, and 
triangles — devices adopted in England — no need 
for visible effort, for mental strain : the grouping 
was spontaneous, the conversation bubbled up easy 
as a fountain, and an unparalleled social instinct 
fused into harmony worn-out France and the 
France to come. *' I saw the old moon yester- 
night with the young moon in her arms " ; so we 
vision the French salons ; the old power, all un- 
knowing, nursing the new power ; an effete world 
paling before a fresh light. 

The English Salon was too much hedged in by 
convention to be an influence in forming thought. 
Not only politics, but a large number of other 



PRECURSORS & CONTEMPORARIES 113 

subjects were considered unsuitable for polite con- 
versation. The English Salon was narrower in 
outlook than her sister in France ; less wide in 
sympathy, less permanent in appeal ; the English 
Salon lacked also the final graces of the French 
Salon, the heritage of the past. The English 
Salon was more awkward, more self-conscious, 
more middle-class ; but, on the other hand, its 
fame was unsullied. The lives of the Blue- 
Stockings were so much above reproach that they 
could make themselves ridiculous by condemning 
Mrs Thrale for her second marriage. In France 
the case was very different. 

Society in France was corrupt to its core, and 
hardly one of the great ladies but was touched, and 
in most cases with justice, by the breath of scandal. 
There was Madame Geoffrin, indeed, pure in 
reputation, who, though of bourgeois extraction, 
kept a salon of European celebrity by her exquisite 
gift of sympathy. But in the case of a Madame 
de I'Epinay, half her charm consisted in her 
wanton irresponsibility ; and in the case of a 
Mademoiselle de I'Espinasse, fame counted not 
at all beside a personality so brilliant, so passionate, 
so tender. Mademoiselle de FEspinasse, it will be 
remembered, was companion to the blind Madame 
du Deffand, and used to hold a little rival salon 
under her employer's roof in her famous " Chambre 
du Derriere," while her employer slept. Horace 
Walpole, for whom Madame du Deffand in her 



114 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

old age had so passionate and pathetic an affection, 
is the only Englishman who appears to belong of 
right to this brilliant society. Does not this 
picture of him seem a picture out of ancient 
France ? Letitia Hawkins tells us that Horace 
Walpole was not so much tall as long, slender 
to excess, with hands and complexion of a most 
unhealthy paleness. ''His eyes were remarkably 
bright and penetrating, very dark and lively. . . . 
He always entered a room in that style of 
affected delicacy which fashion had then made 
almost natural — chapeau bas between his hands, 
as if he wished to compress it, knees bent, and 
feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His 
dress was most usually in summer a lavender 
suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver 
or white silk, partridge silk stockings and gold 
buckles, ruffles and frill of lace." 

In Eighteenth-century France laxity of morals 
did not shock : whereas in England, the reputation 
of women, though not of men, was scrupulously 
regarded — a distinction commented on by the wise 
old Mrs Delany. " The minutest indiscretion of a 
w^oman," she says, ''though occasioned by men, 
never fails of being enlarged into a notorious 
crime ; but men are to sin on without limitation 
or blame. A hard case ! Not the restraint 
we are under, — for that I extremely approve of, 
— but the unreasonable licence tolerated in the 
men." Fanny Burney was greatly attracted by 




JULIE DE LESPINASSE 

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH BY CARMONTELI.E IX T^E MUSEE DE CHANTILLY 



PRECURSORS k CONTEMPORARIES 115 

two Frenchwomen who visited England, and who 
sought her out with much flattering assiduity — 
Madame de GenHs and Madame de Stael ; but at 
the first rumour touching their good name, Fanny 
Burney with much fluttering and heart-burning, felt 
herself obliged to withdraw from their acquaint- 
ance. Fanny Burney's attitude is typical of her 
time and nation. 

Another striking contrast between the French 
and English salons lies in the fact that the 
French salons were almost exclusively attended 
by men, whereas in England the sexes freely 
intermingled. In essentials, therefore, the con- 
stitution of social intercourse was different. The 
French salons were ruled by one bright particular 
star, who attracted and subtly dominated her 
guests, a situation more romantic and dangerous, 
less natural and healthy than in this country. 

A contemporary, Wraxall, asks in his Memoirs, 
whether the literary society of London could enter 
into any comparison with the society that met in 
the apartments of Madame du Deffand and of 
Mademoiselle de I'Espinasse. He concludes, 
'' neither in the period of its duration, nor in the 
number, merit, or intellectual eminence of the 
principal members could the English society be 
held up on any parity with that of France." This 
is the inevitable conclusion ; and we may add 
other points of superiority belonging to contem- 
porary French society that Wraxall has not 



116 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

given in detail ; greater brilliance of conversation ; 
sharper keenness of wit ; wider reach of idea ; 
stronger dazzle of personality. 

But in the English Salon we breathe a purer 
atmosphere ; we meet women not less kind, 
perhaps, but more sterling in worth ; women 
who cannot talk so well, because they have 
devoted themselves to interests other than talk ; 
women capable of friendships with women that 
are more than alliances ; women who have come 
into closer grip with life because the cleavage 
between the aristocracy and the people in England 
is not so absolute ; women more narrow, but more 
restful ; rigid, conventional, provincial even, but 
honest, and with a stern sense of duty. Their 
charm owed nothing to sophistication — their wit 
was largely mother-wit, and their wisdom was 
grounded on experience. 

The English Blue-Stockings cannot rival their 
contemporaries overseas in intellectual and social 
gifts : but they are good to live with. 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 

WHEN first we try to shape the figure of 
Mrs Thrale before our imagination, the 
dust of obscure controversies veils the view. Two 
successive outbursts of windy violence, thick with 
imprecation, blur her outline : the one raised by 
her second marriage (with Signor Piozzi), the other 
by her Anecdotes of Dr Johnso7iy which started the 
" Bozzi and Pozzi " controversy, as Horace Walpole 
irreverently calls it — the controversy between her- 
self and Boswell on the subject of the dead doctor. 
Her biographers are so busy in defending her from 
misinterpretation, in disavowing a false woman, 
that the real w^oman has difficulty in emerging. 
As to contemporary evidence, we have to make a 
composite portrait of her mainly out of the couleicr 
de rose water-colour of Fanny Burney, the grudging 
and unsympathetic sketch of Boswell, and her own 
contradictory jottings. 

By sheer force of personality she detaches herself 
from the obscuring veils ; with an eclat of vivacity 
she bursts through the dusts of controversy. She 
stands before us drawn in definite lines, hardly 
softened by that sweetness so generally attributed 

to her. 

X17 



118 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

Not only her " expressive eyes," but her whole 
face is alive with character. " I never was hand- 
some," she is reported to have said in old age, " I 
had always too many strong points in my face for 
beauty." Fanny Burney gives this detailed account 
of her appearance on the occasion of Mrs Thrale's 
visit to Dr Burney : " Mrs Thrale is a pretty 
woman still, though she has some defect in the 
mouth which looks like a cut or scar ; but her nose 
is very handsome, her complexion very fair ; she 
has the embonpoint charmaiit^ and her eyes are 
blue and lustrous. She is extremely lively and 
chatty, and showed none of the supercilious or 
pedantic airs, so freely, or rather so scoffingly, 
attributed to women of learning and celebrity." 

" She is extremely lively and chatty." In these 
words, perhaps, lie the final secret of Mrs Thrale's 
social success. 

Her vivacity is different in type to the vivacity 
of Mrs Montagu, more impulsive, more unself- 
conscious. Mrs Montagu, fragile in build, nervous 
in temperament, was spurred to mental activity, 
partly by restlessness, partly by ambition ; Mrs 
Thrale, "short, plump, and brisk," as Boswell 
describes her, more robust in health, more philo- 
sophical in disposition, was lively through sheer 
exuberance of spirits. This difference is accounted 
for, not only by disposition and by physical tempera- 
ment, but by race. Mrs Montagu was an English- 
woman, reserved by nature, to whom self-expression 




*V- 






.f ■ 

4 '■*■'' tS . 



MRS. THRALE 

FROM THE DRAWING BY GEORGE DANCE, R.A., IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 119 

was a greater effort ; Mrs Thrale was a Welsh- 
woman, with the spontaneity, the nimbleness of 
intellect of the Celt. She talked more, as well 
as more unguardedly, than Mrs Montagu. Her 
tongue, in fact, was apt to run away with her. Says 
Johnson : '' She is the first woman in the world, 
could she but restrain that wicked tongue of hers ; 
she would be the only woman, could she but com- 
mand that little whirligig." 

Her friends attribute to her a sweetness of 
character that must have gone far towards amend- 
ing her unrestrained speech. '' Mrs Thrale seems 
to have a sweetness of disposition that equals all 
her other excellencies," Fanny Burney is always 
repeating in varying words. Dr Johnson says : 
'' Mrs Thrale is a sweet creature, and never angry ; 
she has a temper the most delightful of any woman 
I ever knew." 

It is by reason of their friendship with Dr John- 
son that the Thrales have a permanent place in 
our literary history. At their house at Streatham, 
and at their house in London, a room was appro- 
priated entirely to the Doctor's use, and he came 
and went as he pleased. During the last seventeen 
years of his life a considerable portion of his time 
was spent at Streatham Place — " an elegant villa 
six miles from town " — then regarded as a residence 
in the country. For the suburbs, with their curious 
local life, did not exist. There was no Mr Smith 
of Surbiton, no Mr Podmore of Stoke Tootington ; 



120 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

and Mrs Thrale was called " Streatham's Hebe," 
as one might speak of Highland Mary or St 
Bridget of the Isles. 

At Streatham Place the Doctor enjoyed, not only 
luxurious surroundings and the peace of a well- 
ordered household, but the close friendship of its 
master, and the thoughtful sympathy of its mistress. 
He was more than an honoured guest, he was an 
intimate ; and Fanny Burney, who has given us 
the most vivid picture of Johnson at Streatham, 
shows how his rugged personality softened under 
these kindly influences, restful to him physically, 
soothing to him morally, stimulating to him intel- 
lectually. 

Thrale was the dominant power at Streatham 
Place. Indeed, Mrs Thrale's husbands are un- 
usually conspicuous in her life. 

As we already noticed, Mr Montagu, absorbed 
in Parliamentary duties, aloof in mathematical 
regions, left the stage entirely to his wife ; the 
adoring Dr Delany yielded Mrs Delany space and 
precedence in reverence of love ; an Irishman of a 
very different type, Mr Vesey, allowed ** the Sylph " 
to follow her own bent through sheer indifference. 
But Thrale, by impetus of wealth, of personality, 
by his own valuation of himself, assumed as of 
right the principal place in the foreground. Mr 
and Mrs Thrale figure together during his life as 
host and hostess. He is as important a factor in 
the entertainment as she is. As to Mrs Thrale's 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 121 

second husband, Piozzi, modest and retiring as he 
was, the scandal of their marriage forced him into 
fierce pubHcity, and Mrs Piozzi, in pride and self- 
justification, felt bound to keep him prominently to 
the front. 

Mr Thrale was a solid man, materially, mentally, 
and physically. He was a man of riches and 
position, by trade a brewer ; he represented South- 
wark three times in Parliament ; Streatham Place 
was maintained with much splendour, and he kept a 
pack of hounds at Croydon. Boswell describes 
him as "tall, well-proportioned and stately"; but 
as a man of property himself, Boswell feels it 
necessary to make some justification for the position 
of consequence occupied by a brewer. " In this 
great commercial country it is natural that a 
situation which produces much wealth should be 
considered as very respectable ; and no doubt 
honest industry is entitled to esteem." It is 
evident that the indissoluble union between wealth 
and respectability was as prominent a tenet in the 
Eighteenth, as in the Twentieth, Century. Boswell, 
however, sees certain dangers incident in this belief. 
" But perhaps the too rapid advances of men of low 
extraction tends to lessen the value of that distinc- 
tion by birth and gentility which has ever been 
found beneficial to the grand scheme of subordina- 
tion." The "grand scheme of subordination" 
view of life, which made Boswell a defender of the 
Slave Trade, is now largely discredited ; other 



122 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

more deadly perils of money-worship, undreamed 
of by Boswell, have manifested themselves ; yet the 
amazing belief that wealth involves respectability 
is to-day as rampant as ever. Dr Johnson was a 
consistent defender of luxury ; but he does on one 
occasion accuse Mrs Thrale of the *' insolence of 
wealth" : because she sneered at his proposal to have 
Mr Boswell and his lady on a visit at his house. 

Mrs Thrale, thirteen years after her marriage, 
gives an interesting picture of her husband's 
appearance and character. We quote from her 
diary, *' Thraliana," extracts from which have 
appeared in print. " Mr Thrale's person is 
manly, his countenance agreeable, his eyes steady 
and of the deepest blue ; his look neither 
soft nor severe, neither sprightly nor gloomy, 
but thoughtful and intelligent ; his address is 
neither caressive nor repulsive, but unaffectedly 

civil and decorous " She goes on to say 

that he is fond of money, but fond of liberality too, 
— that he is willing to give generously and to spend 
fashionably — that he is tranquil, moderate, and has 
an easiness of temper that makes him exceedingly 
comfortable to live with. In a word, she draws 
him in middle life as exemplary, but unlovable : 
awakening no affection in wife or children or 
servants. In early manhood he had the manners 
and led the life of a gay man of the world ; his 
marriage was one purely of convenience ; Mrs 
Thrale, who brought with her a fortune of at least 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 123 

;^ 1 0,000, and came of a good Welsh family, was, 
according to her own account, the only lady of the 
many he approached willing to take up her town 
residence in the Borough (Southwark) where the 
brewing business was carried on. Thrale was also 
a man of culture, and reckoned among his friends 
many of the intellectual giants of the day. Johnson 
had a great opinion of his friend's attainments and 
capacities, and the Doctor gave this interesting 
dictum on the finality of Thrale's remarks. " Pray, 
Doctor," said a gentleman to Johnson, " is Mr 
Thrale a man of conversation, or is he only wise and 
silent?" ''Why, Sir, his conversation does not 
show the mimtte hand, but he generally strikes the 
hour very correctly." Thrale was one of the few 
men of sufficient personality to check the Doctor's 
outbursts. '' There, there, now we have had 
enough for one lecture, Dr Johnson, we will not be 
upon education any more till after dinner if you 
please," he would say. The Doctor helped Thrale 
to select the books for the library at Streatham 
Place — the room that contained the famous collec- 
tion of Sir Joshua Reynolds' portraits, known as 
the Streatham gallery. Mrs Thrale and her eldest 
daughter were in one piece over the fire-place at 
full length. Mr Thrale was over the door leading 
to his study, and above the bookcases there were 
pictures of Dr Johnson, Burke, Dr Goldsmith, 
Garrick, Dr Burney and Sir Joshua Reynolds him- 
self Such a collection surely is unique in the 



124 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

annals of English art ; to possess such a circle of 
distinguished friends, and their portraits all painted 
by the hand of one great master, argues a rare 
combination of culture, of opportunity, and of wealth. 
This collection was sold by Mrs Thrale herself 
(then Mrs Piozzi) in 1816 when she was in need of 
money. The room is easily constructed in 
imagination, and when we vision within its walls 
the Thrales, Dr Johnson "talking Ramblers," the 
Burneys, and Mrs Montagu, we seem to have a 
microcosm of one section of Eighteenth Century life. 

Streatham Place was a delightful residence. 
The house was three-storied, white, and very 
pleasantly situated in a fine paddock. It stood on 
the southern side of the lower common between 
Streatham and Tooting, and was pulled down in 
1863. The grounds were well laid out with high- 
walled kitchen gardens, ice-houses and pineries ; 
and they were of such extent that a wall of nearly 
two miles bordered the shrubbery encircling them. 
We read of cattle, of poultry, of dogs being kept. 
The library was frequently used as a breakfast- 
room ; the parlour in which dinner-parties were 
held had prints of Hogarth on the walls ; the 
saloon was hung with sky-blue. 

The part assigned to Mrs Thrale amid these 
spacious opportunities for hospitality was to be an 
ornament of intellectual worth — '* a fountain of 
perpetual flow," as indeed Miss Seward reported 
her. With that curious insight which characterises 







O S 



< ~ 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZl) 125 

her estimate of her husband Mrs Thrale says : 
'* With regard to his wife, though Httle tender of her 
person, he is very partial to her understanding." 
It is a puzzHng and significant fact that despite all 
the charm and sweetness of disposition dwelt on by 
her friends, Airs Thrale never succeeded in gaining 
the affection of this husband, nor of her children. 

Mr Thrale's partiality for his wife's understanding 
was so great that he refused to allow her any part 
in domestic affairs : these were to be left exclusively 
to the housekeeper and the cook. Even Dr Johnson 
half resented Mrs Thrale feeding the chickens 
when she might have been cultivating her mind. 
Her exclusion from the kitchen and the larder is a 
curious example of the fallacy that the domestic 
and the intellectual are inimical : had Mrs Thrale 
been a woman less vivacious in disposition and less 
spontaneous in intercourse, her character would 
undoubtedly have suffered from so unnatural a 
limitation. 

As it was, however, she quite fulfilled all that 
was expected of her. She was well read and well- 
educated, but more important, she was exquisitely 
apt at quotation and quick at impromptu. Dr 
Johnson told Miss Seward that Mrs Thrale had 
more colloquial wit than most of our literary women. 
H er springs of conversation never ran dry. Writing 
in 1 8 19, when she was nearly eighty, Mrs Piozzi 
says : " My bag of tales, alias bagatelles, never 
seems exhausted in pleasant company." If she 



126 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

did not ** diffuse knowledge," she certainly diffused 
good temper, and her nimbleness of wit was stimu- 
lating. She was inclined at times, however, to fall 
into sentimental exaggeration which passed the 
decorum even of a sentimental age. Writing to 
Fanny about Cecilia she says : ** My eyes red with 
reading and crying, I stop every moment to kiss 
the book, and to wish it was my Burney. 'Tis the 
sweetest book, the most interesting, the most 
engaging. ..." 

Very apt was Dr Johnson's remark to her on one 
occasion : " I know nobody who blasts by praise 
as you do, for wherever there is exaggerated praise 
everybody is set against a character." 

Mrs Thrale knew French, Italian, Spanish, 
Hebrew and a little Latin, but no Greek ; and 
thereby hangs a rather pathetic story. Thrale 
became deeply enamoured in later life of the beau- 
tiful Sophy Streatfield — she of the ** ivory neck, 
nose and notions — a la grecque. ..." the finished 
coquette who could cause her tears to flow at will 
without reason — an exhibition very popular at 
Streatham Place. To Mrs Thrale the sharpest 
sting seemed to lie in the fact that S.S. (as she was 
familiarly called) possessed superior scholarship. 
Thrale remarked with reference to some lines 
quoted by his wife : *' Miss Streatfield could have 
quoted those lines in Greek." Mrs Thrale adds : 
''His saying so piqued me, and piqued me because 
it was true. I wish I understood Greek ! " 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 127 

The Thrales entertained largely and variously, 
both at their house in the Borough, and at Strea- 
tham. Contemporary memoirs contain records of 
house-parties, of intimate and formal dinner-parties, 
and of assemblies. 

We can form some conception of the magnificence 
of the dinners from the account given by the Rev. 
Dr Thomas Campbell : — 

'* First Course, soups at head and foot, removed 
by fish and a saddle of mutton. 

'* Second Course, a fowl they call galena at head, 
and a capon larger than some of our Irish turkeys 
at foot. 

*' Third Course, four different sorts of ices, pine- 
apple, grape, raspberry, and a fourth ; in each 
remove there were, I think, fourteen dishes. The 
two first courses were served on massy plate." 

At Streatham Place Dr Johnson was in his 
element. Here he found the society of ''the 
learned, the witty, and eminent in every way, who 
were assembled in numerous companies." Here 
he lived for sixteen or seventeen years with the 
Thrales on terms of closest intimacy. Thrale he 
respected and liked ; for Mrs Thrale he seems to 
have had a feeling of stronger admiration and 
affection than for any other lady of his coterie. 
From her in the happy times he received delicate 
untiring attention ; she gave him the bright re- 
sponsive appreciation he so longed for ; she met 
his marvellous gusts of speech with captivating wit 



128 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

and womanliness. In Miss Reynolds' Recollections 
we read that Johnson used to dwell on the praises 
of Mrs Thrale "with a peculiar delight, a paternal 
fondness, expressive of conscious exultation in being 
so intimately acquainted with her." The memory 
of this bond was so poignantly alive in Sir Walter 
Scott's time, that when in 1829 he landed with a 
party of friends on the Island of Skye, and asked 
his friends the first thought that had come into 
their minds, they all confessed it had been the 
Latin ode addressed by Dr Johnson to Mrs Thrale 
from this spot. 

" Through paths that halt from stone to stone, 
Amid the din of tongues unknown, 
One image haunts my soul alone, 

Thine, gentle Thrale ! " (Milne's translation.) 

In retrospect Mrs Thrale speaks of her long 
connection with Dr Johnson as a grievous burden 
imposed upon her by her husband : but contem- 
porary evidence seems to show that at the time she 
was sufficiently well pleased by the Doctor's affec- 
tion and esteem. In the early days of their 
acquaintance the constant presence of so notable a 
personage in the house conferred distinction upon 
it. Quick of mind, apt, well-read, the tussles of 
intellectual converse could not have failed in great 
attractions for Mrs Thrale. She writes in later 
years : " I really thought he could not have existed 
without my conversations, forsooth ! " Then the 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 129 

hurt of Johnson's rough reproofs must soon have 
been healed by his praise of the sweetness with 
which she bore them. Certainly she conveyed to 
the outer world an impression of ardent devotion. 
Boswell, jealous as he was of her influence, feels 
bound to acknowledge her as a companion satellite. 
•'I ... had conversation enough with her to 
admire her talents, and to show her that I was as 
Johnsonian as herself" 

The following passage out of Boswell's Life is 
one of the happiest descriptions of Johnson's power, 
and brings Mrs Thrale and Boswell into one rare 
moment of agreement. Boswell finds Dr Johnson 
at breakfast with Mrs Thrale at her house in the 
Borough (1776) : "In a moment he was in a full 
glow of conversation, and I felt myself elevated as 
if brought into another state of being. Mrs Thrale 
and I looked to each other while he talked, and 
our looks expressed our congenial admiration 
and affection for him. ... I exclaimed to her, 
' I am now intellectually Hermippus redivivus, 
I am quite restored by him, by transfusion 
oi mind' 'There are many,' she replied, 'who 
admire and respect Dr Johnson, but you and I 
love him.' " 

Fanny Burney reports Mrs Thrale as saying 
to Dr Johnson : '* This I can tell you, sir, 
without any flattery — I not only bear your 
reproofs when present, but in almost every- 
thing I do in your absence, I ask myself 

9 



130 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

whether you would like it, and what you would 
say to it." 

Thrale died suddenly in 1781, and an inevitable 
change came over Mrs Thrale's relationship with 
Dr Johnson. Dr Johnson was one of the executors 
of the will, and both he and Mrs Thrale were 
plunged headlong into the business of settling the 
estate. She had shown herself an energetic woman 
on previous occasions when her husband's affairs 
had become involved ; and now she went constantly 
down to the Borough, consulting, advising, super- 
intending. '' Mrs Montagu has been here ; she 
says I ought to have a statue erected to me for 
my diligent attendance on my compting-house 
duties." 

Mrs Thrale's papers contain a good deal of in- 
teresting information about the conditions of the 
brewery business at this time, and the money to be 
made in that trade. In some years, she tells us, 
;^ 1 5,000 or ;^ 1 6,000 had been got ; but Thrale was 
inclined to over-brew, and in this way brought him- 
self to the verge of financial ruin. On one occasion 
Mrs Thrale and Dr Johnson tried hard to extract 
from him a promise to brew no more than 80,000 
barrels in one winter. "If he got but 2s. 6d. by 
each barrel," Mrs Thrale remarks, '' 80,000 half- 
crowns are ;!f 10,000, and what more would mortal 
man desire than an income of ten thousand a year — 
five to spend and five to lay up." Beer, it is to be 
noted, was sold retail at 6d. a quart bottle. Besides 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 131 

endangering his position by over-brewing, Thrale 
was induced, on the recommendation of a quack, 
to erect a plant costing more than ^2000 for the 
brewing of beer "without the beggarly elements of 
malt and hops." Mrs Thrale showed plenty of 
energy and common-sense in face of the serious 
crisis brought on by the ruinous failure of the 
scheme : she kept the clerks from deserting their 
posts, and borrowed sufficient money to tide over 
the time of difficulty. Johnson, with his amazing 
self-confidence, was always ready to give the 
brewer technical and other advice ; and so im- 
pressed Perkins, the manager, with his common- 
sense, that Perkins had a portrait of the Doctor 
hung up in the counting-house. 

After Thrale's death, Johnson seems to have 
relished the full flavour of his responsibility as 
executor, and derived peculiar delight from the 
signing of cheques for immense sums. The 
glamour of finance, the adventure and scent of 
money-pursuit, belong in a special degree to the 
literature of to-day ; but Johnson anticipated this 
romanticising of money-making, the vastness of 
the concern fired his imagination, and when it 
came to the question of selling the brewery this 
famous dictum is attributed to him : "We are not 
here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the 
potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of 
avarice." The brewery was sold for the sum of 
;^i35jOOO to the Quaker Barclay, who, taking the 



132 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

manager into partnership, became the firm of 
Barclay and Perkins. As manager, Boswell in- 
forms us, Perkins used to have a salary of five 
hundred a year. This firm, in 1835, was the 
largest of its kind in the world. Mrs Thrale 
wrote : "I have by this bargain purchased 
peace and a stable fortune, restoration to my 
original rank in life, and a situation undis- 
turbed by commercial jargon, unpolluted by 
commercial frauds, undisgraced by commercial 
connections." 

It is clear that Mrs Thrale wished to break away 
entirely from the old life and from old associations 
— that she desired to enjoy to the full the sensation 
of her newly-born freedom and of her increased 
importance. As to Johnson, he was getting older 
and more exacting ; his peculiarities were growing 
more irritating ; there was no Mr Thrale to check 
his outbursts. It is unlikely that Mrs Thrale 
behaved to the Doctor with any definite unkind- 
ness, but it seems clear that she now regarded him 
as something of an incubus, to be shaken off as 
gently as possible. And Johnson suffered — suffered 
cruelly. It was not that his pride was hurt, as in 
the rupture with Mrs Montagu ; it was not the 
violent break in a habit of life which had been 
delightful that moved him so profoundly ; rather 
an affection, deep, strong, of slow growth, on which 
he had come unconsciously to depend, which he 
had believed unshakable, was threatened with 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 133 

hideous decay. And now the Doctor's attentions 
began visibly to bore Mrs Thrale ; the newspaper 
reports, linking her name with Dr Johnson's in 
possible marriage, gave her extreme irritation, and 
her affection for Piozzi and marriage with him 
caused the final breach. 

It is almost inevitable that Mrs Thrale's Anec- 
dotes of Dr Johnson, published after his death, 
should reflect her attitude of mind and appear a 
little disino^enuous. She had to defend herself 
against the world's criticism of her conduct to 
Johnson in his later life, and at the same time to 
treat her subject with enthusiastic eulogy. Horace 
Walpole, in incisive phrase, shows the way she 
took out of the dilemma : " Her panegyric is loud 
in praise of her hero ; and almost every fact she 
relates disgraces him." Mrs Chapone criticises 
the book in words almost identical. Though neces- 
sarily much of interest is recorded in the Anecdotes 
no sense of personality is conveyed. Her own 
description suggests a Rembrandtesque portrait : 
'' Mine is a mere candle-light picture of his latter 
days, where everything falls in dark and shadow ex- 
cept the face, the index of the mind ; but even that 
is seen unfavourably and with a paleness beyond 
what nature gave it." But instead of a portrait 
strong in lights and shades we have a reflection, 
not only pale, but dim and blurred, as if glimpsed 
in shallow running water. 

The Anecdotes appeared in 1786, and the first 



134 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

impression was sold out the first day. The book 
made a considerable noise, and created considerable 
controversy. Boswell, whose Life did not appear 
till five years later, entered with spirit into the 
fray, his chief accusation against Mrs Thrale being 
her inaccuracy. Squibs abounded, and the print 
shops were full of satiric prints. No wonder 
Burke should have exclaimed to Hannah More, 
'' How many maggots have crawled out of that 
great body ! " in reference to the numerous 
small scribblers who made capital out of the 
dead. 

If her treatment of Dr Johnson during his 
life and after his death gave rise to furious dis- 
cussion, she had to face criticism still more 
scathing on account of her marriage with Signor 
Piozzi. 

It is very difficult to realise nowadays why this 
marriage should have been regarded with such 
universal opprobrium. Piozzi was a foreigner, it 
is true ; he was a professional singer ; but he was 
a gentleman of character and position, eminent 
in his profession, earning some ^1200 a year, and 
possessing, according to Mrs Piozzi, every moral 
quality. " The man I love, I love for his honesty, 
for his tenderness of heart, his dignity of mind, his 
piety to God, his duty to his mother, and his 
delicacy to me." She wrote in 1782 : *' A woman 
of passable person, ancient family, respectable 
character, uncommon talents, and three thousand 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 135 

a year, has a right to think herself any man's 
equal, and has nothing to seek but return of affec- 
tion from whatever partner she pitches on." Then 
there was the question of her five daughters (Mrs 
Thrale's only son had died in 1776; she had had 
twelve children in all). The eldest Miss Thrale, 
though we read of her high character after she 
married Lord Keith, appears to have been an 
unamiable girl. Fanny Burney says : '* She is 
reckoned cold and proud, but I believe her to be 
only shy and reserved." Charlotte Ann Burney 
writes that '' Miss Thrale has taken it into her 
head to be civil to people this winter, I hear." It 
is abundantly evident that between mother and 
daughter little sympathy existed. There was no 
financial complication, since the daughters were 
each provided with property to the extent of 
;^20,ooo. In this crisis Mrs Thrale behaved, 
according to her own account, with dramatic 
fitness. An interview took place between Piozzi, 
Mrs Thrale, and Miss Thrale, at which Mrs 
Thrale writes : " I confessed my attachment to 
him and her together with many tears and agonies 
one day at Streatham ; told them both that I 
wished I had two hearts for their sakes, but having 
one only I would break it between them." The 
letters were delivered into Miss Thrale's keep- 
ing, and Piozzi dismissed. Mrs Thrale spent 
over a year of unhappiness with her daughters 
at Bath ; and only when her decline of health 



136 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

became alarming did the daughters relent. Piozzi 
was recalled, and the marriage took place in 

1784. 

In our present era of extraordinary unions, Hester 
Thrale's second marriage appears not merely ex- 
cusable, but quite normal. The Eighteenth Century, 
however, has not been called the age of Reason for 
nothing; and the Eighteenth Century lady brought 
Reason very searchingly to bear — in theory at least 
— on the subject of marriage. The many treatises 
of advice to young girls inculcate, as well as a 
prudent consideration of material benefits, a re- 
straint of the emotions, a mastery over the passions, 
a self-control which has indeed its charming side, 
but is carried to an extreme. As if to counter- 
balance the coarseness of the age, the Eighteenth 
Century maiden was to be cold as a mountain- 
nymph — her every thought and feeling were to be 
kept close under the dominion of the proprieties. 
As in modern France, stress was laid upon friend- 
ship in marriage ; similarity of interests, of fortunes, 
and of social position were to be the main objects 
of desire. Hester Thrale outraged all these canons. 
The world chose to regard the singer as something 
of an adventurer, a fortune-hunter ; it considered 
that Mrs Thrale should have remained exclusively 
devoted to the memory of Thrale and the interests 
of her daughters. But the main front of the 
offending was the fact that she frankly avowed she 
felt for Piozzi ''passionate love subsisting with 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 137 

uncontaminated conduct." Mrs Frail Piozzi, as 
Horace Walpole unkindly calls her — there is a 
character named Mrs Frail in Congreve's Double 
Dealer — the epithet Mrs Frail Piozzi merely sums 
up the general opinion that she had allowed her 
emotions to obtain undue sway, that she had thrown 
to the winds the wise restraints of decorum and 
abandoned everything in a whirl of passion, 
unseeming the dignity of her sex and state of 
life. 

Her friends practically deserted her in this crisis. 
According to Mrs Carter the marriage showed '' a 
plentiful lack of common-sense." Madame d'Arblay 
writes in the Memoirs of Dr Burney : " Her station 
in Society, her fortune, her distinguished education, 
and her conscious sense of its distinction ; and yet 
more, her high origin — a native honour, which had 
always seemed the glory of her self-appreciation ; 
all had contributed to lift her so eminently above 
the restlessly impetuous tribe, who immolate fame, 
interest, and duty to the shrine of passion, that the 
outcry of surprise and censure raised throughout 
the metropolis by these unexpected nuptials, was 
almost stunning in its jarring noise of general re- 
probation ; resounding through madrigals, parodies, 
declamation, epigrams and irony." Mrs Piozzi 
was attacked with such venom that even Boswell 
felt enmity was being carried too far. He gives 
the following anecdote : Mrs Thrale having said, 
perhaps affectedly : " I don't want to fly," Johnson 



138 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

replied, *' With your wings, madam, you must fly ; 
but have a care, there are clippers abroad." Boswell 
makes this comment, " But have they not clipped 
rather rudely, and gone a great deal closer than was 
necessary ? " 

The marriage appears to have turned out a happy 
one. After three years in Italy the Piozzis returned 
to England, passing their time between Streatham, 
Wales, and various English Spas. Piozzi was in 
temperament and taste a contrast to his wife. He 
is described as a ''quiet, civil man," modest and 
unaffected, obliging to his neighbours and kind to 
the poor. He continued passionately devoted to 
music, and was never able to feel himself at home 
in the English language or in English habits of 
thought. He administered his wife's affairs with 
prudence and economy, restored her ancestral home 
in the Vale of Clwyd, built Brynbella, a more con- 
venient residence, and rebuilt and pewed the church 
in that neighbourhood. As to Mrs Piozzi, she 
retained her extraordinary vivacity, her love of 
entertaining, up to the very end. She kept the 
seventh anniversary of her second marriage at 
Streatham Place "with prodigious splendour and 
gaiety. Seventy people to dinner . . . never was 
a pleasanter day seen, and at night the trees and 
front of the house were illuminated with coloured 
lamps that called forth our neighbours from all 
the adjacent villages to admire and enjoy the 
diversion." 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 139 

Piozzi died of gout in 1809, and after that date 
Mrs Piozzi resided chiefly at Bath and at CHfton. 
She celebrated her eightieth birthday in 1820 by a 
concert, ball, and supper at the Kingston Rooms, 
Bath, and herself opened the ball with her adopted 
son, Sir John Salisbury, a nephew of her husband's. 
In 1 818 the Bishop of St Asaph describes her 
as a ''meteor"; and Moore, who saw her in 
1 8 19, said she had "all the quickness and 
intelligence of a gay young woman." In 182 1 
she died. 

" I have lost now, just lost, my once most dear, 
intimate and admired friend, Mrs Thrale Piozzi," 
writes Madame dArblay, "who preserved her fine 
faculties, her imagination, her intelligence, her 
power of allusion and citation, her extraordinary 
memory, and her almost unexampled vivacity, to 
the last of her existence. . . . She was in truth 
a most wonderful character for talents and eccen- 
tricity, for wit, genius, generosity, spirit, and power 
of entertainment." 

Mrs Piozzi published, besides the Anecdotes, 
several works which have fallen into complete 
neglect. In an age dominated by the Latin idiom 
of Johnson she practised her doctrine that writing 
should be as colloquial as speech : and in her 
" Observations and Reflections made in the course 
of a journey through France, Italy and Germany 
(1789)," she uses idioms and familiarities of 
language that called down upon her from many 



140 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

contemporaries the reproach of vulgarism. Mrs 
Carter accuses the book also of being " vexatiously 
dilatory." Her "British Synonymy'' appeared 
1794. This book aims at illustrating the distinc- 
tion between synonymous terms (such as " Affec- 
tion, Passion, Tenderness, Fondness, Love"; 
'' Awful, Reverential, Solemn "; '' To cry, to weep ") 
by means of lively anecdote. It makes no pretence 
to accuracy, and is valueless as a contribution to 
science. It is, however, an ingenious pretext for 
a medley of tales and bagatelles from Mrs Piozzi's 
fertile brain. Hannah More, writing in 1787, says 
that the making of synonyms was an exercise of 
all the beaux esprits at Paris : so Mrs Piozzi 
merely elaborated a current craze. In *' Retrospec- 
tion" (1801) Mrs Piozzi embarked gaily on a 
scheme entirely beyond her powers. This book 
aims at giving a '' Review of the most striking and 
Important Events, Characters, Situations and their 
consequences, which the Last Eighteen Hundred 
Years have presented to the View of Mankind." 
Such a book demands not only the profound 
knowledge of a lifetime, but the most delicate sense 
of proportion. The best that can be said of such 
a work is what we shall have to say of Mrs 
Chapone's scheme for learning universal history ; 
that it implies the conception of a larger view, and 
involves some sense of historical continuity. 

We can picture to ourselves the Mrs Thrale of 
Johnson's day — his "lovely Hetty, always young 



MRS THRALE (PIOZZI) 141 

and always pretty," as he calls her in an affection- 
ate impromptu — the hostess sweet in disposition, 
brilliant in talk ; we can visualise the Mrs Piozzi 
of middle age, " skipping about like a kid, quite a 
figure of fun, as gay as a lark," wearing the tiger- 
skin shawl and the white beaver hat with the black 
plumes previously described. We can imagine 
the old lady that Moore met with her irrepressible 
spirits and her multiple activities. But the woman 
who braved the world for love, and dared to 
challenge the conventions of her day, eludes us. 
Somehow, we remain cold to the " heart-fascination 
of Mrs Thrale." Her lines — when she dismissed 
Piozzi — 

". . . Call each wind to waft him over 
Nor let him linger long at Dover, 
But here from past fatigues recover 
And write his love some lines from Dover. ..." 

and so on through all the rhymes to Dover ; her 
lines when she called him back — 

" Over mountains, rivers, valleys 
See my love returns to Calais . . .'* 

and so on through all the rhymes to Calais ; — seem 
ludicrously trivial in view of a great emotional 
crisis : her whole account of her confession of love, 
of her parting, savours of melodrama. But it was 
an age unpractised in the expression of romantic 



142 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

emotion, even when such existed ; and we cannot 
do Mrs Piozzi the injustice of doubting- the reaHty 
of her feeHngs. Only, quite unreasonably, the 
story of her life seems to demand a more romantic 
figure for its heroine. 



CARDS AND CONVERSATION 

THE Eighteenth Century was an Age of Talk. 
The noise of Fourteenth - century London 
comes to us as a clatter of tools mingled with 
music : the hammer resounds on the wooden 
houses, the iron rings to the blows of the smiths, 
while chants innumerable from abbey and church 
fill the vibrating air. This noise continues into 
Tudor times, but with the Puritan regime a silence 
falls upon London ; the interior life is the im- 
portant life ; men are men of action, and not of 
speech. But when we approach the Eighteenth 
Century, London again bubbles with sound. What 
a din of human voices assails our ears ! It rises 
from those three thousand London coffee-houses, 
which, in 1 708, formed the nucleus of social inter- 
course : Babble-machines, precursors of the political 
and the critical press ; arbiters of letters and of 
taste, each with its habitual circle of frequenters, 
its own special department of discussion. Here 
the wits assembled, spending the greater part of 
the day in talk ; here Dryden presided as literary 
dictator, and then Pope, to be followed later in a 
somewhat different environment by Dr Johnson. 
For out of the coffee-houses developed another 

143 



144 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

instrument of talk, the club, of which the ** Literary 
Club " is the most famous example — " the Club," 
as it was familiarly called — Fox, Burke, Gibbon, 
Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, being 
among its members. The deafening noise from 
the coffee-houses now resolves itself into a certain 
coherence ; we begin to distinguish phrases, then 
snatches of conversation ; and realise, with almost 
a shock of wonder, that instead of these ephemeral 
words dying upon the air, they have been caught, 
prisoned, preserved for us in myriad volumes, that 
they still speak to us with something of their living 
accent, are still vital with something of their old 
force and charm. We almost hear with our own 
ears the utterances of Dr Johnson's profound sense 
and ponderous humour ; we seem to listen to the 
actual voices of the set who surrounded him. Did 
ever century speak with such cultivated self- 
expression ? was ever personality developed to the 
same point of social fitness ? 

The supreme value set upon conversation and 
the triumph of its achievements are witnessed in 
many devoted records. Conversation was more 
than a ''vehicle of sweet communion," more than a 
diffuser of knowledge, more than a distinction to 
the individual : it was a high art, that required for 
its service not only the most brilliant talents, but 
the most exalted genius ; a heroic contest that 
called for courage, for dash, for initiative. Boswell, 
the High Priest of the Cult, tells us that Dr Johnson 



CARDS AND CONVERSATION 145 

had habituated himself all his life to consider 
conversation as a trial of Intellectual vigour and 
skill. But conversation was much more to Dr 
Johnson. It meant to him the excitement of the fray, 
the rapture of the fight, the glory of the victory. 
When Mrs Montagu Is coming to Streatham 
Place, Dr Johnson cries out to Fanny Burney : 
*' Down with her, Burney ! — down with her ! Spare 
her not ! — attack her, fight her, and down with her 
at once ! You are a rising wit, and she Is at the 
top ; and when I was beginning the world, and 
was nothing and nobody, the joy of my life was to 
fire at all the established wits ! and then everybody 
loved to halloo me on." 

Boswell has not many moments of genuine 
inspiration in his delightful and gigantic com- 
pendium : but conversation has the power to fan 
him into flame. In one moment of rapture he rises 
above himself, dazzles us with his sudden insight, 
opens up a new world. Accustomed to the inter- 
change of trivial commonplace we feel we have 
never dreamed what conversation might be. Bos- 
well has gone down to the Thrale's house in the 
Borough, and finds Dr Johnson at breakfast — we 
have already quoted the passage In full. *' In a 
moment he was in a glow of conversation, and I 
felt myself elevated as if brought into another state 
of being." An art that could produce such 
an ecstasy is indeed worthy of admiration, of 
worship ! 

10 



146 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Conversation at the coffee-house ; conversation 
at the club : the conversation of the first half of 
the Eighteenth Century is exclusively masculine, 
we note. Conversation has another stage to 
travel before it reaches the salon and feminine 
society, and a formidable rival bars its way. 
Whist, that redoubtable power of the Eighteenth 
Century, has erected in its path a great pile of the 
"devil's picture books." 

" Long was Society o'er-run 
By whist, that desolating Hun ; 
Long did quadrille despotic sit, 
That Vandal of colloquial wit. 
And Conversation's setting light 
Lay half-obscured in Gothic night." 

{Bas Bleu.) 

In Mrs Sarah Battle's inimitable comparison 
between these two card-games whist and quadrille, 
quadrille, you remember, is described as a feast of 
snatches, showy and specious, with chance-started, 
capricious, and ever-fluctuating alliances — a game 
of captivation to the young and enthusiastic. But 
whist was the solider game : that was her word. 
The bold champions who first dared attack the 
giant whist with his dazzling satellites, quadrille 
and faro, were Dr Johnson and Mrs Chapone in 
The Rmnbler (1750). 

The ''Rambler" remarks : *' At card-tables, how- 
ever brilliant, I have always thought my visit lost, 
for I could know nothing of the company but their 



CARDS AND CONVERSATION 147 

clothes and their faces. I saw their looks clouded 
at the beginning of every game, with a uniform 
solicitude, now and then in its progress varied with 
a short triumph ; at one time wrinkled with cun- 
ning; at another deadened by despondency, or, by 
accident, flushed with rage at the unskilful or un- 
lucky play of a partner. From such assemblies . . . 
I was quickly forced to retire; they were too trifling 
for me when I was grave, and too dull when I was 
cheerful." 

However secure Dr Johnson might feel in the 
sufiiciency of conversation for men, it is evident 
that he thought when cards were banished it was 
no harm substituting other attractions besides 
conversation in general society. He gives this 
delightful piece of advice to Mrs Thrale : "I ad- 
vised Mrs Thrale, who has no card-parties at her 
house, to give sweetmeats and such good things, 
in an evening, as are not commonly given, and 
she would find company enough come to her ; for 
everybody loves to have things which please the 
palate put in their way, without trouble or prepara- 
tion." Hannah More speaks of Mrs Montagu and 
herself as being "the two monsters in creation who 
never touch a card " ; and Horace Walpole relates 
how, when he came into his title, Mrs '^Epictetus" 
Carter wished him joy, and said, "Now, I hope you 
will go to the House of Lords and put down 
Faro." 

It ought to be added, however, that Dr Johnson 



148 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

regretted in after life his inability to play at cards. 
In the ''Journal of a Tour in the Hebrides," we 
read: '' Dr Johnson — I am sorry I have not learnt 
to play at cards. It is very useful in life ; it gene- 
rates kindness and consolidates society." This 
differs from the later view of his coadjutor in the 
reform, Mrs Chapone, who calls whist '' that sad 
resource of dulness and of age." Mrs Carter was 
in her youth an ardent opponent of cards (1745) : 
'' For the punishment of my iniquities I was once 
drawn into a — what shall I call it ? a drum, a rout, 
a racket, a hurricane, an uproar, a something, in 
short, that was the utter confusion of all sense 
and meaning, where every charm in conversation 
was drove away by that foe to human society, 
whist. ..." In later life she did not eschew 
cards, but that was probably because she desired 
to be sociable with her neighbours, other old ladies 
at Deal. 

Through the offices, therefore, of Dr Johnson 
and Mrs Chapone, who helped to form public 
opinion ; of the hostesses, Mrs Thrale, Mrs Mon- 
tagu, and Mrs Vesey, who refused to have cards 
at their parties ; of Mrs Carter and Hannah More, 
among others, who aided the cause by passive 
resistance : we find whist overcome and exiled 
from one little tract of society, which gains a 
unique distinction by admitting conversation alone 
as Master of the Ceremonies. ''The sole purpose 
of the Bas Bleu assemblies was conversation," says 



CARDS AND CONVERSATION 149 

Hannah More in the advertisement to her poem, 
*' and they were different in no respect from other 
parties, but that the company did not play at 
cards." 

The Cult of Conversation assumed different rites 
under the segis of the three chief Blue-Stocking 
hostesses. Conversation in its most perfect form 
implies an equal interchange of thought. Mrs 
Thrale's conversation, we fancy, approximated 
most nearly to this standard. She had the gift of 
apropos, the instantaneous flash ; she has said and 
written things that rival Mrs Montagu's in clever- 
ness : for instance, in allusion to scientific experi- 
ment, " Never was poor nature so put to the rack, 
and never, of course, was she made to tell so many 
lies." Mrs Thrale never absorbed the whole con- 
versation, as Mrs Montagu sometimes did ; nor 
sank her personality in order to draw out others, 
which was the opposite extreme sometimes prac- 
tised by Mrs Vesey. Mrs Montagu's guests came 
to hear her talk ; Mrs Vesey's guests came to talk 
themselves ; Mrs Thrale's guests came to talk to 
Mrs Thrale. Mrs Vesey's parties were, therefore, 
the most enjoyable; Mrs Thrale's the liveliest; 
Mrs Montagu's the most intellectual. Mrs Mon- 
tagu was the possessor of a rich mind, which 
diffused knowledge ; Mrs Vesey was the possessor 
of a sympathetic nature, which awakened response. 
Midway between the two was Mrs Thrale, enjoy- 
ing a measure of both these qualities. Mrs Mon- 



150 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

tagu and Mrs Thrale provided Intellectual fire- 
works for their guests — ''squibs and crackers," 
rockets, even Catharine wheels. Mrs Vesey carried 
about with her a little flickering taper of friendliness 
that burned all manner of soft strange colours, of 
which the chief business was to light the torches of 
other minds. We shall see presently how scope 
was given to the special talents of these hostesses 
by a curious and careful arrangement of guests. 

The opinion of contemporaries on the conversa- 
tion of some Blue-Stocking hostesses has already 
been given in detail ; let us hear what the Blue- 
Stockings have themselves to say on the subject of 
conversation in the abstract. 

Mrs Chapone and Hannah More have both 
written specifically on Conversation : Mrs Chapone, 
an Essay, and Hannah More in her Bas Bleu poem, 
of which the sub-title is Conversation. Hannah 
More is kindled to ardour by her theme ; conver- 
sation is the vehicle of friendship, the medium of 
instruction, '' Soft polisher of rugged man. Refiner 
of the social plan." Conversation is the noblest 
commerce of mankind, that gives knowledge cir- 
culation. It is for the joy of telling his adventures 
that the traveller journeys under a parching sky 
and dares the northern zone. But the end and 
object of conversation is to search the depths of 
moral truth, and thence produce " what tends to 
practice and to use," and next, ** what mends the 
taste and forms the mind." She speaks well of 



CARDS AND CONVERSATION 151 

Books as "the mind's food, not exercise." Not 
only is the mind instructed and strengthened by 
Conversation, but from it also flows " the pure 
delight when kindling sympathies unite," — it is 
the vehicle of "communion sweet from heart to 
heart." 

Mrs Chapone begins her essay by condemning 
the "universal practice of card-playing'^; but she 
is not nearly so enthusiastic as Hannah More on 
the surpassing merits of Conversation as a sub- 
stitute. Even Mrs Montagu, with all her social 
practice, was often painfully aware of the lack of 
spontaneity in conversation ; she realised the diffi- 
culty of raising it above a key of mediocrity, often 
struck by the most commonplace person present. 
She writes to Mrs Carter : " There is a certain 
visiting tone, and few dare strike above it ; the 
most fashionable fool in the company sets the 
time to the key of their own voice, as the parish 
clerk does with a pitch pipe ; and it is no matter 
what is the strength and power of your organs, you 
are to strain till you scream, or mutter till you are 
hoarse, as pleases the leader of the chorus." 

In Mrs Chapone's essay, speaking generally, 
the conversations she treats of are either dull or 
scandalous. With characteristic scholasticism she 
writes that dull conversations are to be considered 
as useful in training the moral qualities of patience, 
benevolence, and self-denial ; but as to scandalous 
conversation, this is a more dangerous method of 



152 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

employing time even than card-playing. It is 
curious to hear through the decorous periods of 
this essay a faint and far away echo of the talk in 
the School for Scandal. Sheridan might have 
taken it as raw material to be sublimated into the 
flashing wit of his comedy. "Some are even 
shameless enough to begin their ridicule on those 
who have just quitted the room, and whom they 
have been grossly flattering," writes Mrs Chapone; 
which, transformed and condensed in the crucible, 
becomes Sir Peter Teazle's parting phrase, " I 
leave my character behind me." ''Nothing is more 
disgusting," writes Mrs Chapone, "than that air of 
mildness and benevolence with which some ill- 
natured observation on the person or dress of our 
absent acquaintance, or some sly sarcasm, designing 
to obscure the brightest part of their character, is 
usually introduced." She proceeds to give illustra- 
tions, not without humour, but too long to quote, 
and we are inevitably reminded of Sheridan's Mrs 
Candour, " who, though she is a little talkative, 
everybody allows her to be the best-natured and 
best sort of woman in the world." 

Such parallels showing how ore is refined into 
gold, also indicate that Mrs Chapone had the root 
of the matter in her — that she was gifted with keen 
observation, with insight into the foibles of others, 
and with a sense of justice. The aim of conversa- 
tion is not, to the serious mind of Mrs Chapone, 
delight, friendly intercourse, even instruction ; its 



CARDS AND CONVERSATION 153 

ultimate end should be the diffusion of high prin- 
ciples, of noble setiments, of worthy ambitions. Is 
it unkind to the memory of Mrs Chapone to state 
here that Fanny Burney found her parties a trifle 
dull ? that they were avoided by the young and 
the gay, and that the noted conversationalists who 
attended them were a little too much aware that 
they had come to improve the shining hour ? 

Mrs Delany, in her good-humoured but some- 
what severe strictures on Blue-stocking Conversa- 
tion, introduces a picture of conversation in the 
ideal. She is writing to the Viscountess Andover, 
describing a visit to Bulstrode of the learned ladies 
of the day : — 

..." Here I have been some days, nay, I may 
say, almost every hour, entertained with a redun- 
dancy of wit^ with the profoundest zvisdom, with 
the sublimest philosophy, with the greatest lear^iing, 
and knowledge of men, letters and manners, with 
the nicest punctilios of good breeding, and with the 
most elegant fancy in dress, and yet I have neither 
more wit, wisdo77t, or philosophy. . . . How can it 
be accounted for ? But that my brain is petrified 
like a fossil, or that the overflowing of such a 
torrent of parts comes like a flood from the moun- 
tain on the poor humble valley, and carries all 
before it. I own I prefer the salutary gentle dew 
of common-sense : a little rill, a purling stream that 
fixes the thoughts, and allows of social and reciprocal 
conversation ; but the towerijig sublime, without 



154 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

being modified by the beautiful, is astonishing but 
not pleasing. It is like travelling always in the 
Alps — we wonder at its magnificence, but are 
shocked at the precipices and in dread of being 
crush'd by the impending rocks." 

It is a connoisseur in Propriety who thus figures 
conversation under the image of a little stream 
flowing through a valley. Grace, charm, ease, 
naturalness — these are its final perfections. Con- 
versation, according to the aristocrats of culture, 
has an assigned position in a carefully mapped-out 
scheme of life ; it loses its friendly dignity if it 
harlequinades under too many disguises ; it demands 
an unsuitable strain if it insists on too strict a 
monotony. Judged by this standard, Hannah 
More's ideal of conversation covers too wide and 
too heterogeneous a field ; Mrs Chapone's ideal of 
conversation is cramped in too narrow and too 
austere a place. 

That Mrs Delany's ideal was the one uncon- 
sciously striven after in general society seems 
proved by the fact that politics and the discussion 
of current events were held to be destructive of 
general conversation. Such subjects introduced 
too strenuous an element into the calm of that 
valley scene — disturbed its serenity with gusts of 
passion and clash of fight. "As politics spoil all 
conversations," says Hannah More, '* Mr Walpole 
the other night proposed that everybody should 
forfeit half-a-crown who said anything tending to 



CARDS AND CONVERSATION 155 

introduce the idea either of Ministers or Opposi- 
tion." Sir W. W. Pepys, who laments the death 
of conversation in 1799, accounts in 1809 for its 
extinction in the following wise : . . . "The events 
which are passing before our eyes are of such an 
interesting and gigantic nature, that it would be 
affectation to talk of ancient wars when everything 
dear to us is at stake and involved in the present." 
It follows that conversation occupying itself with 
politics or with current events was not, according to 
Eighteenth Century views, conversation in the best 
sense at all : its realism was too crude, its material 
too undigested. Conversation implies culture, and 
culture the slow ripening into a maturity of bloom 
and flavour. Certain abnormal minds could pro- 
duce the developed fruit at all seasons, minds of 
amazing fecundity like Johnson's, though sometimes 
it was a fruit hard and a little bitter between the 
teeth ; but the average mind required time for 
its harvesting, and nourished itself largely on the 
past. 

Eighteenth Century conditions made possible this 
ideal : there was leisure, there was learning, there 
was prosperity, all these awakening an ambition for 
intellectual distinction : the social element played 
an important part in life, and society was still small 
enough to respond in some degree to one dominant 
impulse. 

The age of Conversation is over ; a myriad 
divided interests have broken it into allotments ; a 



156 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

weedy growth of sensationalism has over-run its 
cultivated domains ; its votaries have scattered to 
lonely hill-tops ; its ancient enemy, whist, in the new 
guise of bridge, has once more resumed sway. 

We have other occupations more thrilling ; 
other speculations more wide-reaching ; other 
interests more ecstatic. But because we have not 
conversation, our social life is a pretence, a blank, 
a mere surface convention, in which we have 
neither learned how to reveal ourselves, nor been 
taught how to reach the realities in others. When 
all is said, the Blue-Stockings were arbiters of an 
art we have lost, of a chemistry we have forgotten ; 
and for a brief space they achieved in England 
that most difficult and most desired of unions — the 
marriage of the Intellectual with the Social — 
through the offices of Conversation. 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 

TN a letter from Mrs Montagu to Mrs Hannah 
-^ More, there is an interesting passage on the 
subjective character of landscape. The different 
dispositions and different intellectual powers of the 
beholder not only change the colour, but also the 
forms of the objects, and group them in various 
orders. " I speak more feelingly on this subject," 
says Mrs Montagu, *' having in the course of 
different summers at Tonbridge rambled over the 
same places with the late Lord Chatham, Mr 
Gilbert West, Dr Young, and our dear imaginative 
Vesey." She describes how the stately Gothic 
Castle occasioned in the statesman's mind reflec- 
tions on the political conditions of a subject in the 
rude age in which it was built ; how to Dr Young, 
the grave author of the *' Night Thoughts," it sug- 
gested the brevity and vanity of all sublunary 
things ; how the landscape aw^akened in Mr West 
the enthusiastic delight of a poet and the pious 
veneration of a philosopher ; and then she comes to 
the impression it made upon Mrs Vesey. " Our 
dear Vesey, if she passed some little recess under 
a hedge, where gypsies had roasted the pilfered 
goose, or in their kettle boiled the slaughtered 

157 



158 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

lamb, conceived it to be the retreat of Oberon, 
where he and his elfin train kept their gay and 
harmless revels, 

* And pearly drops of dew did drink 
In horn cups filled to the brink.' " 

And though Mrs Vesey's parties were perhaps 
the most famous of all the blue-stocking assemblies, 
since Hannah More dedicated her poem of the Bas 
Bleu to this lady ; yet the first note to strike in 
approaching her is not the note of her social 
triumph, but of her idealistic temperament, w^hich 
made the world appear an unreal and faery 
place, big with vague possibilities and strange 
emotions. 

To picture Mrs Vesey we have only contem- 
porary evidence to go upon. From her own hand, 
nothing remains except a few short and scattered 
letters. Those who saw a great part of her corres- 
pondence to Mrs Montagu and to Mrs Carter 
report it as having been instinct with grace and 
imagination. "They were remarkably beautiful," 
says the Rev. Montagu Pennington, speaking of 
her letters, " for she had a peculiar talent in de- 
scribing scenery and events in language in the 
highest degree glowing, picturesque and un- 
affected." This correspondence however appears 
to have been destroyed, yet no figure in our group 
of Eighteenth Century ladies emerges more distinct, 
more consistent in her inconsistencies, more deli- 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 159 

cately alive, than Mrs Vesey from the old volumes 
of memoirs and letters that contain the sole records 
of her personality. 

She was alien in every sense to the spirit of the 
age — alien, rather to the spirit of Eighteenth 
Century England. It was an age of Reason, of 
self-satisfaction ; she was a dreamer seeking in vain 
some ideal she could never reach. It was an age 
of prosaic common-sense ; she breathed habitually 
an air of poetry and romance. It was an age of 
solid faith : she was ever tormented by doubts and 
by questionings. An Irishwoman of the Eighteenth 
Century, Mrs Vesey is shown through English 
eyes to possess all the accepted characteristics that 
make the Irishwoman of to-day — from the English 
point of view. So typical is Mrs Vesey, in her 
virtues and her failings, of the English conception 
of an Irishwoman, that she seems the creation of a 
sympathetic English imagination. Nothing reveals 
more fully the intellectual and emotional range of 
the Blue-Stockings than the admiration, the love, 
and above all, the comprehension they were able to 
give to this bewildering ** Sylph " out of another 
world. 

Mrs Carter, Mrs Montagu, Hannah More, Horace 
Walpole : these were her friends ; all definitely, all 
typically English, and Mrs Vesey appears to have 
inspired these friends with a warmth of feeling quite 
foreign to the somewhat cold Eighteenth Century de- 
corum. The mention of her in letters and memoirs 



160 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

is always accompanied by a little outburst of affec- 
tion. It is clear that her qualities of heart were 
of the most winning sort, kindness, sympathy, an 
absolute forgetfulness of self, generosity, hospitality. 
Horace Walpole's tribute to her, and to the Irish 
as a people, is generous and charming. It occurs 
in a letter to Hannah More. " Our poor friend in 
Clarges Street " is Mrs Vesey. 

** The Irish have the best hearts in the three 
kingdoms, and they never blunder more than when 
they attempt to express their zeal and affection : 
the reason, I suppose, is that cool sense never 
thinks of attempting impossibilities ; but a warm 
heart feels itself ready to do more than is possible 
for those it loves. I am sure our poor friend in 
Clarges Street would subscribe to this last sentence. 
What English heart ever excelled hers ? I should 
almost have said equalled, if I were not writing to 
one that rivals her." 

It is more astonishing to find that Mrs Vesey 's 
English friends should have been able to appreciate 
so discriminatingly her qualities of mind — should 
have been able to analyse a temperament so foreign 
to their experience. " Your imagination," says 
Mrs Carter, writing in 1766, ''is as lively and 
picturesque now, as it could have been at eighteen ; 
and for the same reason, that you are as little 
engaged in the turbulent agitations, the sordid 
principles, and interested schemes of the world 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 161 

now as you were then. These are the sullen 
demons which put to flight the fair forms of imagina- 
tion and annihilate the refined pleasures, which 
never subsist but in conjunction with gentleness 
of disposition and simplicity of heart." It seems 
a little incongruous, however, to have to go for the 
bulk of our information about Mrs Vesey to the 
solid and learned Mrs Carter : though indeed Mrs 
Carter's letters reveal how large a measure of 
insight can be awakened by affection. 

Mrs Carter's friendships are indeed of curious 
significance. Her friendship with the admirable 
Miss Talbot is the only one that is easily under- 
stood. Her friendship with Mrs Montagu is 
puzzling, but it seems to have been founded on a 
subtle appreciation of Mrs Montagu's more stable 
qualities, as is shown in the following extract from 
a letter to Mrs Vesey : " Our friend, you know, 
has talents which must distinguish her in the 
largest circles ; but there it is impossible to dis- 
cover either the beauties of her character, or the 
extent and variety of her understanding, which 
always improves on a more accurate examination, 
and on a nearer view." Mrs Carter's friendship 
with Mrs Vesey is the strangest of all to explain, 
and reveals a strong strain of romance in Mrs 
Carter's temperament. Indeed, Mrs Carter's letters 
to Mrs Vesey throw as much light upon the char- 
acter of the writer, as upon the character of the 
recipient of the letters, and we need not, therefore, 

II 



162 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

hesitate to quote considerably from this corre- 
spondence. Mrs Montagu is perhaps a Httle 
flippant about the scenario of Oberon's faery 
revels ; but Mrs Carter classes herself with Mrs 
Vesey as a visionary, treasures as a sacred memory 
the picture of the moon "which you kindly took 
so much pains to show me through the green 
curtain one night," and makes "ideal assignations" 
with Mrs Vesey, indulging in flights of fancy quite 
unusual to her. Mrs Vesey is on the cliffs of 
Snowdon, and to be near her in spirit, Mrs Carter 
tells us that she takes her solitary ramble '' into 
the wildest and most unfrequented part of the 
country (Kent) that L^ within the compass of my 
terrestrial abilities . . . ascending a cliff where all 
was uninhabited waste around me, and all blank 
ocean below. Here I sat me down at the corner 
of a little copse blasted by the sea-breezes, and 
took you out of my pocket." (This refers to a 
miniature given her by her friend.) " The broken, 
irregular scene around us, the tide rolling beneath, 
and the coast of the opposite kingdom, which was 
full in our view, led us to converse on that tremen- 
dous transformation of the deluged world, when 
the fountains of the great deep burst their en- 
closures, and probably disjoined the solid con- 
tinent. ..." Other reflections follow, and Mrs 
Carter adds, " I have told you how we passed four 
hours on the South Foreland, and now pray tell 
me what we have observed on the cliffs of 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 163 

Snowdon." The starry heavens were also utilised 
as a meeting-place for these soaring spirits. '' I 
am glad you are a star-gazer," writes Mrs Carter. 
. . . '* We may take many an excursion together 
to the stars these clear autumnal evenings, and 
entirely forget the imperceptible tract between 
Deal (where Mrs Carter lived) and Lucan" (Mrs 
Vesey's home near Dublin). 

Mrs Carter's sympathy with her friend extends 
even to sympathy with the aspirations of her 
friend's country. To go to a reception at Mrs 
Vesey's : "I made myself as Irish as possible, 
in wearing an Irish stuff," she tells us. She 
was, moreover, able to appreciate the noble and 
generous qualities discovered in the Irish Parlia- 
ment in 1779. ''Every liberal mind in England 
must have felt a most humiliating sense of 
shame at the treatment of our sister kingdom," 
she writes. It is more astonishing to find that the 
sentimentality of the Irish also appealed to her. 
It seems difficult to believe that Mrs Carter should 
have written the account of the Irish beggar, who 
said she knew " Squire Vesey and his lady " and 
poured forth a '* torrent of encomiums." " The 
woman reiterated her praises, and I my copper, till 
at length she petitioned for a shift. It was very 
lucky that there happened to be one in my drawer, 
or out of pure love to Squire Vesey and his lady, 
there would have been some danger of my parting 
with that on my back." Mrs Carter humorously 



164 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

adds in a^subsequent letter : *' My Irish beggar has 
visited me again this year. ... I expect to have a 
regular annual visit from her, and feel some vanity in 
furnishing the single instance in which any of her 
country people ever enjoyed an English pension." 

Mrs Vesey's was the temperament of the 
dreamer. '' Our Sylph can be in no danger but 
from ideal forms and romantic attitudes." The 
uproar of a stormy sea is as much adapted to the 
sublime of her imagination, writes Mrs Carter, as the 
soft murmurs of a gliding stream to the gentleness 
of her temper. But the dreamer is apt to become 
dissatisfied with prosaic conventions and material 
limitations ; believing in an ideal perfection he 
wastes his energy in a vain search after it ; it is 
the walker of the heights who has the real know- 
ledge of the deeps. And so Mrs Carter compares 
Mrs Vesey with Bartholomew Coke in Ben 
Jonson's play of Bartholo7new Fair. 

" Like Bartholomew Coke, she always wants to 
get every plaything in the whole fair, she would 
see every place in the world at one time, and all the 
people in the world at one view." 

Thus it came about that Mrs Vesey suffered 
from a perpetual restlessness of body and mind, 
and was unable to enjoy one object from the 
apprehension that something better might be found 
in another. Mrs Carter writes to Mrs Montagu : 
'' There are few things, I believe, that she loves 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 165 

like you and me ; yet when she is with us, she 
finds that you and I, not being absolute divinities, 
have no power of bestowing perfect happiness, and 
so, from us she flies away, to try if it is to be met 
with at an assembly or an opera." Besides the 
restlessness, Mrs Vesey had the unpracticality of 
the dreamer. Mrs Carter relates a story which 
discovers " the goodness of her heart and the 
uncommon turn of her head." A sick friend, a 
Mrs Henry, who was staying with Mrs Vesey, had 
been told by the surgeon that when she was able 
to walk she should never venture to use crutches 
upon a floor, for fear of their slipping, but should 
be carried downstairs and use them on the s^ravel- 
walk. 

" On this information up started Mrs Vesey, and 
said she would order the gardener immediately to 
gravel the drawing-room, which being near Mrs 
Henry's bedroom, might give her a walk whenever 
she pleased, without danger or trouble ; and this 
she proposed, not in jest, but with the utmost 
gravity and seriousness." 

Then there was that delightful coffee-pot, which 
Mrs Vesey invented, with neither spout nor handle, 
and a lid that would not open ; '' objections," 
writes Mrs Carter, " that are certainly quite 
nugatory: for as it is of a beautiful Etruscan 
form, it answers every essential purpose of a good 
coffee-pot — except the possibility of making coffee 



166 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

in It, which is only a mere circumstance which 
anyone of true genius would easily overlook." 
Mrs Vesey not only overshot Use in her aim at 
Beauty, but she confused Time and Space, as is so 
often the case with those who live a little above 
the material world ; and thus she frequently laid 
herself open to ridicule. It was to be expected 
perhaps that Fanny Burney should have failed to 
understand Mrs Vesey. Broad and even crude 
types appealed to her, but she was not able to 
sense the more subtle distinctions, the more 
delicate lights and shades. Consequently her 
attitude towards Mrs Vesey is not sympathetic, 
and she makes herself the chronicler of the 
grotesque effects produced by Mrs Vesey's be- 
wilderment of thought. 

" Mrs Vesey was as mirth-provoking from her 
oddities and mistakes as Falstaff was wit-inspiring. 
. . . She had the unguardedness of childhood, 
joined to an Hibernian bewilderment of ideas that 
cast her incessantly into some burlesque situation, 
and incited even the most partial, and even the 
most sensitive of her own countrymen to relate 
stories, speeches and anecdotes of her astonishing 
self-perplexities, her confusion about times and 
circumstances, and her inconceivable jumble of 
recollections between what had happened and what 
might have happened. . . . But what most con- 
tributed to render the scenes of her social circle 
nearly dramatic in comic effect was her deafness. 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 167 

She had commonly two or three or more ear- 
trumpets hanging to her wrists, or slung about her 
neck, or tost upon the chimney-piece or table. The 
instant that any earnestness of countenance or 
animation of gesture struck her eye, she darted 
forward, trumpet in hand, to inquire what was going 
on, but almost always arrived at the speaker at the 
moment that he was become, in his turn, the 
hearer " [Memoirs of Dr B2ir7iey\ 

This is the criticism of the complete outsider ; but 
it must be confessed that even Mrs Vesey's 
intimates did not scruple to point out to her her 
somewhat trying faults. A little gentle pity mingled 
with, and perhaps increased, their affection for her. 
To Mrs Carter she was an irresponsible child. 
"Though I have always honoured you for having 
the simplicity of a little child, I could, with a hearty 
goodwill, whip you for having its imprudence and 
making yourself sick with unripe fruit." This is a 
very favourite attitude of the English towards the 
Irish, occasionally galling in its assumption of 
superiority. Mrs Carter scolds Mrs Vesey quite 
freely on all manner of trivial points, on reckless 
bathing, on staying w^ith Mrs Montagu till she was 
quite exhausted; "it is treating her as children do a 
clockwork toy, which they never think has diverted 
them long enough till they have forced and broken 
all the springs " ; on taking draughts that do not 
agree with her — " by guarding against imaginary 
distempers you are in perpetual real danger from 



168 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

misapplied and improper remedies " ; besides 
writing to her with much energetic conviction on 
the subject of religion. 

All this kindly-intended teaching had no other 
effect than to awake in Mrs Vesey's heart gratitude 
to her friend. The following letter was addressed 
to Mrs Carter to be opened after Mrs Vesey's 
death : — 

" Accept, my dear Mrs Carter, my last thanks 
for the benefit and delight of your conversation. 
Perhaps at the time you open this box I shall have 
still more reason to be grateful. I leave you Mrs 
Dunbar's picture, and the inestimable treasure of 
your own letters, wishing much you would give them 
for the improvement of future minds. You will 
still be doing that good you loved upon earth, when 
you are removed to those happy regions where I 
wish I could deserve to meet you." 

This letter was instrumental in inducing Mrs 
Carter's Literary Executor to publish her cor- 
respondence, and by this fact Mrs Vesey is no mere 
name to us, but passes before our eyes with some- 
thing of the frail elusive sweetness and grace that 
she had in this world. 

In Mrs Vesey's life we have a curious example of 
the idealistic temperament searching for satisfaction 
in social functions, — following the gleam in the vain 
hope of capturing it, from one group at an assembly 
to another — from one friend's to another friend's 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 169 

house. It is strange to find this restless yearning 
of the Celt seeking, not for the Holy Grail in 
misty woods, or for ideal love amid the Shadowy 
Waters ; but for the most brilliant sallies of wit and 
the sharpest point of epigram in crowded salons. 
" Indeed," says Mrs Carter of Mrs Vesey, "she is 
formed for enjoyments much superior to that 
foolish world, which too much engages her mind, 
and leads it on by the dancing phantom of an ignis 
fatuus of pleasure, which she wearies her spirits 
in pursuing and which she is never able to 
overtake." 

Mrs Vesey was born about 171 5, the daughter of 
Sir Thomas Vesey, Bishop of Ossory. Her first 
husband, William Handcock, was member of the 
Irish Parliament, and a relation of his, Mrs Hand- 
cock, remained her devoted companion to the end. 
Her second husband, Agmondesham Vesey, was 
also a member of the Irish Parliament, and held 
the appointment of Accountant General of Ireland, 
probably from 1767. In 1776 he became Privy 
Councillor in Ireland. Mrs Vesey's parties were 
at their zenith between 1770 and 1784 : Vesey died 
in 1785, and Mrs Vesey in 1791. 

Agmondesham Vesey stands out a clearly drawn 
figure in the Memoirs : from the English point of 
view, as typically Irish as his wife, though in 
another way. He would appear to have possessed 
considerable administrative ability. He had literary 
pretensions since he assisted Lyttleton in his Life 



170 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

of Henry II., and since he became, through his 
friendship with Burke, in 1773 a member ,of the 
Literary Club. Burke described him as " a man 
of gentle manners ; " which drew forth this some- 
what surprising interruption from Dr Johnson. 
"Sir," said Johnson, "you need say no more. 
When you have said a man of gentle manners, you 
have said enough." Vesey evidently possessed 
much charm of personality : Hannah More, writing 
in 1 78 1, remarks, " I know no house where there 
is such good rational society and a conversation so 
general, so easy, and so unpretending." For this 
some credit must be due to the master of the house. 
But it appears that when we have said " a man of 
gentle manners " we have said not merely enough, 
but almost all that is to be said in his favour. To 
use a common Irish expression, he was one of those 
who "hung up his fiddle behind the door" — that is 
to say, he kept his sprightly music for the outer 
world, and put the instrument out of sight of 
the home-circle. He was a little over-excitable, 
witness his excessive eagerness about his election 
to " the Club." He had two couriers waiting to 
bring him the quickest news of his success. He 
had, moreover, faults of a serious kind. Mrs 
Carter tells us that he did not understand Mrs 
Vesey, and what is worse, that he neglected her. 
" Mere constitutional good humour, and specious 
civility are mighty pretty decorations of an after- 
noon visit, but operate very little at home, or in 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 171 

the important duties of life." Mrs Carter attributes 
his failings not so much to any defect of morals as 
to a weakness of character which led him to adopt 
the prevailing fashion of the time. "He has many- 
amiable qualities," Mrs Carter writes in 1774, 
*' and would have many more if he formed his 
standard of action from his own mind, for I am 
inclined to think he is not vicious so much from 
inclination as from the example of the world. If 
it was a fashionable thing for wits and scholars and 
lord-lieutenants and other distinguished personages 
to be true to their wives, probably our friend would 
not have found him an unfaithful husband." 

Vesey's hobby was architecture, and his treat- 
ment of their house Lucan, near Dublin, stands in 
the memoirs of the time as a characteristic example 
of his failure to understand his wife, or to consult 
her wishes. Lucan in its original shape, was an 
old castle of rambling and solemn Gothic form, 
exquisitely adapted to Mrs Vesey's " delightful 
spirit of innocent irregularity." This house Vesey 
"improved" in 1750, and took down in 1776 to 
make way for a new structure in his " correct 
Grecian taste " — " a mere prosaical house full of 
mortal comforts and conveniences, without the 
least particle of romance or sylphery in its whole 
composition." Mrs Carter waxes very indignant 
on this score. Writing to Mrs Vesey in 1768, 
when there was already talk " of demolishing this 
enchanting abode," she says. . . . 



172 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

'' It is impossible he can be so unsentimental, so 
unpoetical and so anti-romantic as to think seriously 
of committing so atrocious an action against all the 
powers of imagination and against you, — which all 
the Courts of Judicature in Europe that have any 
degree of true taste must allow a most sufficient 
ground of divorce ; and it is certainly, therefore, 
very fit that in your stead he should take to himself 
some good, fat, notable Lady Bustle, as soon as he 
has built a four-square brick house with large 
comely sash-windows for her reception." 

Vesey also made considerable alterations in their 
first London House in Bolton Row, where most of 
the famous parties were held. They moved in 
1780 to Clarges Street. 

There are but few allusions to Vesey at his wife's 
parties, but undoubtedly, if he were present at 
them, he, had the qualifications of a good host. 
On the other hand, one would not have imagined 
that Mrs Vesey's temperament would have adapted 
itself easily to the duties of hostess, even though 
all the practical arrangements were undertaken by 
the invaluable Mrs Handcock. This lady won the 
esteem of all Mrs Vesey's friends by her sober 
good sense and her tactful affection for the Sylph. 
Mrs Carter gives a characteristic picture both 
of herself and Mrs Handcock in the following 
vignette : — 

** As great a luxury as I have experienced this 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 173 

evening in my solitary tea, I would gladly have 
exchanged it, my dear Mrs Vesey, for a more 
social entertainment in Bolton Row, and I would 
have given up my uncontrolled excesses for a 
limited number of cups and a grave remonstrance 
from Mrs Handcock's prudence and sobriety be- 
tween every one of them." 

But the highest tribute to Mrs Handcock comes 
from Hannah More's pen. It was written at a time 
when Mrs Vesey's faculties were failing, and when 
her state caused her friends extreme distress. The 
passage contains a quotation from the ** Sublime 
and Beautiful Burke," which appears, not only one 
of the loveliest things he has ever written, but one 
of the loveliest things that has ever been written, 
though perhaps the application of the phrase must 
be attributed to Hannah More : — 

'' What a blessing for Mrs Vesey that Mrs 
Handcock is alive and well ! I do venerate that 
woman beyond words ; her faithful, quiet, patient 
attachment makes all showy qualities and shining 
talents appear little in my eyes. Such characters 
are what Mr Burke calls ' the soft quiet green, on 
which the soul loves to rest ! ' " 

Surely the companionship of such a woman must 
have helped to soothe and sweeten the whole 
nature of the eager, unsatisfied dreamer, and to 
keep her longer in touch with sane, human things. 



174 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

The main characteristic that distinguished Mrs 
Vesey's parties from others of that period was 
their absence of formality, and the extraordinary 
ease and well-being experienced by every guest. 
Mrs Vesey possessed two important qualifications 
as hostess, unselfconsciousness and sympathy ; 
she had a singular power of drawing out of each 
individual the best that was in him. Mrs Montagu 
undoubtedly felt it incumbent on her to be the 
chief luminary of her parties, to dazzle and to 
corruscate ; but Mrs Vesey, who had not a particle 
of vanity, succeeded in creating an atmosphere in 
which every element was able to shine. She had 
infinite attention to bestow upon every guest ; she 
made each feel himself a principal and distinguished 
object ; she diffused a sense of harmony, of good 
humour over the whole assembly. Hannah More, 
in the Bas Bleu makes allusion to the minute atten- 
tion given by Mrs Vesey to the disposal of guests 
at a party — a question of grave experiment in this 
epoch, which is treated of in a succeeding chapter. 
Hannah More also happily compares Mrs Vesey's 
extraordinary gift of fusing discordant elements, to 
the magic of chemistry. 

" Nor only geometric art 
Does this presiding power impart. 
But chemists too who want the essence, 
Which makes or mars all coalescence, 
Of her the secret rare might get, 
How different kinds amalgamate . . ." 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 175 

The science of chemistry is used to explain the 
chemical combination of divers elements at her 
parties ; the science of mathematics is invoked to 
describe the various shapes into which the groups 
coalesce. Mrs Vesey was surely mistress of a 
most mysterious chemistry and a most irregular 
mathematic — the chemistry of a unique personality, 
the geometry of a sympathetic intuition. She was 
even able to give to a crowded room a sense of 
margin and of space. " One would think," said 
Mrs Carter, " that you stripped the souls of your 
company of their bodies, and left only a phantom 
to cover their nakedness." 

This last gift was a very necessary one, for Mrs 
Vesey was the soul of hospitality, and asked all 
and sundry to her house. Any person of character 
was freely admitted. There was no ceremony, no 
cards and no supper. Indeed, Hannah More com- 
plains of the crush, and Horace Walpole of the din 
of her assemblies ; the latter tells us how she 
** collects all the graduates and candidates for 
fame till they are as unintelligible as the good 
folks at Babel." 

The close of Mrs Vesey's life was clouded with 
gloom. Vesey died in 1785, with **his accounts for 
both worlds . . . unsettled." He left his wife very 
inadequately provided for, and his will excited the 
extreme indignation of Mrs Montagu — '' I will say 
no more of the monster, for I cannot think of him 
with patience," — and of all Mrs Vesey's friends. 



176 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Mrs Vesey's grief, however, was extreme. " I find 
she has almost worn herself out with tears and 
fretting," writes Mrs Carter. ''What can we say 
to her ? The subject is delicate, as it is very pro- 
bable that she retains great affection for the ungrate- 
ful husband who so ill deserved it. . ." Fanny 
Burney writes to Mrs Montagu with less simplicity 
but in the same spirit. 

'* I am sorry — I had almost said surprised — at 
dear Mrs Vesey's continued regret : but a heart so 
much framed for tenderness weighs not always the 
full value of what excites it, and where there is too 
much kindness for discrimination the scentless 
' gaudy flower ' or the permanent ' reviving 
aromatic ' seem to have an equal claim upon the 
affections, however wide the difference of their 
desert." 

Mrs Vesey continued to see her friends down to 
the year 1788 ; then gradually her faculties left her, 
and she lingered on till 1791. Her friends con- 
tinued most faithful, though she no longer knew 
them, and strangest fact, the only one among them 
all whose attentions gave her the smallest pleasure 
was, according to Hannah More, Horace Walpole. 
Hannah More writes, from Cowslip Green : — 

"When I sit in a little hermitage I have built in 
my garden — not to be melancholy in, but to think 
upon my friends, and to read their works and letters, 



MRS VESEY (1715-1791) 177 

— Mr Walpole seldomer presents himself to my 
mind as the man of wit than as the tender-hearted 
and humane friend of my dear, infirm, broken- 
spirited Mrs Vesey. . . . My very heart is softened 
when I consider that she is now out of the way of 
your kind attentions, and I fear that nothing else 
on earth gave her the smallest pleasure." 

On this picture of Horace Walpole and Mrs 
Vesey, we close, a picture dark with one of the 
most terrible of tragedies, and yet relieved by some- 
thing sweet, human and unexpected, — some quality 
of exquisite tenderness that knew how to penetrate 
through the veil. 



12 



THE SQUARING OF THE CIRCLE 

BEHOLD Conversation enthroned supreme as 
Goddess of the Blue-Stocking Society ; her 
ancient enemy, whist, driven from the gates ; her 
poHshed ahars blazing with wax-lights on which 
altars each night votaries pour *' Libations large of 
lemonade," 

" On silver vases loaded, rise, 
The biscuits' ample sacrifice. 
Nor be the milk-white stream forgot 
Of thirst-assuaging, cool orgeat ; 
Rise, incense pure from fragrant Tea, 
Delicious incense, worthy Thee ! " 

{Bas Bleu). 

And now a very difficult and delicate matter has 
to be dealt with ; the arrangement of the offices ; 
the order of such rites as shall not merely minister 
to the letter, but shall preserve the spirit. 

For conversation at its ideal is the essence of 
personality ; it is thought sublimated by the individ- 
ual flame ; fancy bubbling up fresh and sparkling 
from the well of Self. The brilliance, the very 
continuance of conversation, depends on the most 
subtle conditions of atmosphere : it takes colour, 

inspiration from its surroundings ; and is killed by 

178 



THE SQUARING OF THE CIRCLE 179 

an alien blast. Thus it follows that the social gift, 
the power to evoke, to stimulate, to sustain con- 
versation in a large assembly of people, is as prec- 
ious as it is rare. The ideal hostess knows inti- 
mately all her guests, and by her keen sympathy 
can make each contribute his special flavour to the 
conversation ; the ideal hostess, by happy instinct, 
or by careful patience, learns how to manipulate 
this bubbling and flaming element of conversation, 
and how to direct it into safe and continous channels. 
In a word, the ideal hostess, like the ideal priest, 
can dispense with mechanical aids and relying 
solely upon her own initiative and intuition, 
can create the atmosphere in which the cult 
flourishes. 

But the ideal hostess is, necessarily, infrequent, if 
not almost unattainable ; and for all except adepts, 
rules and regulations have to be resorted to. These 
rules must be framed to solve the following 
problem : how to give the High Priest of Con- 
versation wise opportunities for conducting the 
service, and at the same time, how to make every 
member of the body participate in the ceremony. 
If the High Priest becomes too important, we are 
threatened by a barren formalism ; and if the 
congregation become too clamourous, order is 
overwhelmed in confusion. 

To-day the cult of Conversation being extinct, 
we are many of us unaware of the varying rites 
that accompanied its worship, of the devices 



180 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

employed to increase its reputation — of the 
elaborate precautions used to maintain its integrity. 
Conversation, it is true, still lingers out a doubtful 
existence at a dinner-table here and there ; but it 
never attempts to force its way into At Homes, 
which were once its most crowded temples. These 
are a mere haphazard conglomeration, an often 
unfortuitous collection of atoms drifting without 
aim, without direction, hither and thither : discon- 
nected words are tossed about like spray — the 
result of mere surface evolutions ; and the atoms 
part without having experienced either the joy of 
social satisfaction or the stimulus of intellectual 
delight. 

Of course, assemblies of this kind, unorganised, 
chaotic, existed in the Eighteenth Century as well 
as to-day. Take Hannah More's description of an 
assembly at the Bishop of St Asaph's : — 

*' Conceive to yourself one hundred and fifty or 
two hundred people met together, dressed in the 
extremity of the fashion ; painted as red as 
bacchanals ; poisoning the air with perfumes . . . 
protesting that they are engaged to ten other 
places, and lamenting the fatigue they are not 
obliged to endure ; ten or a dozen card tables, 
crammed with dowagers of quality, grave ecclesi- 
astics and yellow admirals ; and you have an idea 
of an assembly.'^ 

Of another assembly Mrs Delany writes : — 



THE SQUARING OF THE CIRCLE 181 

** I had a whisper with Mrs Boscawen, another 
with Lady Bute, and a wink from the Duchess of 
Portland — poor diet for one who loves a plentiful 
meal of social friendship." 

Such assemblies are but the raw material of 
social intercourse : the material requires to be care- 
fully sorted and refined before happy results can be 
obtained. Dr Burney says: " The best ingredients, 
however excellent they may be separately, always 
prove inefficient if they are not well blended ; for 
if any of them is a little sour, or a little too bitter, 
— nay, or a little too sweet, they counteract each 
other." 

But the wise choice of guests was only a small 
part of the problem : there remained the more 
important and more vexed question of their best 
arrangement. To this the Blue-Stockings devoted 
the most anxious thought and experiment — experi- 
ment, because social conversation in its best sense 
had never existed in England, and there were no 
precedents to go on, no established laws. It is 
therefore not surprising that the Blue-Stocking 
hostesses arrived at opposite conclusions as to the 
best arrangement of guests. Two distinct schools 
organised themselves, the one upholding the 
Method of the Circle, the other the Method of its 
Disintegration. Mrs Montagu headed the former, 
and Mrs Vesey the latter school. 

It is astonishing to find what attention is paid in 



182 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

contemporary memoirs to these two methods of 
arranging guests at parties. We have not only- 
numerous descriptions of these methods, but 
interesting comparisons of their merits and 
defects. 

Let us first examine Mrs Montagu's circle 
system. We read this description of it in the 
Memoirs of Dr Burney. "At Mrs Montagu's the 
semi-circle that faced the fire retained during the 
whole evening its unbroken form, with a precision 
that made it seem described by a Brobdignagian 
compass. The lady of the castle commonly placed 
herself at the upper end of the room, near the 
commencement of the curve, so as to be courteously 
visible to all her guests ; having the person of the 
highest rank or consequence properly on one side 
and the person the most eminent for talents, 
sagaciously on the other." At first sight this 
method does not promise well. There is a rigidity 
of form about it, an absence of movement, a 
constraint, that one would have fancied fatal to 
anything but the monologue. But Lady Louisa 
Stuart, who has penned the most entertaining 
account of Mrs Montagu's circle, has something to 
say in its favour. " Everything in that house, as 
if under a spell, was sure to form itself into a 
circle or semi-circle," writes Lady Louisa Stuart, 
** Mrs Montagu having invited us to a very early 
party we went at the hour appointed, and took our 
places in a vast half-moon, consisting of about 



THE SQUARING OF THE CIRCLE 183 

twenty or twenty-five women, where, placed 
between two grave faces unknown to me, I sate 
hiding yawns with my fan, and wondering at the 
unwonted seclusion of the superior sex. At length 
a door opened behind us, and a body of eminent 
personages — the Chancellor, I think, and a bishop 
or two among them, filed in from the dining-room. 
They looked wistfully over our shoulders at a good 
fire, which the barrier we presented left them no 
means of approaching ; then drawing chairs from 
the wall seated themselves around us in an outer 

crescent, silent and solemn as our own 

There was no remedy ; we must all have died 
at our posts, if one lady had not luckily been 
called away, whose exit made a gap for the 
wise men to enter and take possession of the 
fireplace." 

Lady Louisa Stuart next proceeds to an inter- 
esting philosophic dissertation on the circle : — 

" A circle such as here described, though the 
worst shape imaginable for easy familiar conver- 
sation may be the best for a brilliant interchange of 
— I had nearly said snip-snap — of pointed sentences 
and happy repartees. Every flash being visible, 
every joke distinctly heard from one end to the 
other, the consequent applause may act like a dram 
upon bodily combatants, invigorating wit and pro- 
voking fresh sallies. As fitted for actors and an 
audience, it may likewise suit whoever has inter- 
esting anecdotes to tell and the talent of telling 



184 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

them well ; or whoever can clearly and pleasantly 
explain something that the surrounding hearers 
wish to understand. If you had good luck, there- 
fore, you might not be only greatly amused at Mrs 
Montagu's, but carry away much that was well worth 
remembering. But then, alas ! the circular form 
is not less convenient to prosers and people who 
love to hear themselves talk ; so you might, on 
the contrary, come in for the most tiresome disserta- 
tions, the dullest long stories, the flattest jokes 
anywhere to be found . . ." 

Hannah More, it would seem, had experience of 
the circle in its more wearisome form : she dwells on 
its tendency to give importance to commonplace, 
and to exclude the majority of guests from any 
participation in the talk : 

" Where the dire Circle keeps its station, 
Each common phrase is an oration ; 
And crackling fans, and whisp'ring misses, 
Compose their conversation blisses. . . ." 

By the circle method, therefore, conversation 
was an entertainment provided by the few, to 
which the many came as audience : and in spite of 
the good word that Lady Louisa Stuart has to say 
for the system, most of the Blue- Stocking hostesses 
were comically anxious to avoid the least ap- 
proach to the circular form. But to Mrs Vesey 
especially belongs the fame of squaring the 
Circle. 



THE SQUARING OF THE CIRCLE 185 

" Small were that art which would ensure 
The Circle's boasted quadrature ! 
See Fesey's plastic genius make 
A Circle every figure take ; 
Nay, shapes and forms, which would defy 
All science of geometry ; 
Isoceles, and Parallel 
Names hard to speak and hard to spell ! 
Th' enchantress wav'd her wand, and spoke ; 
Her potent wand the Circle broke : 
The social spirits hover round, 
x\nd bless the liberated ground." 

(Bas Bleu). 

*' Her fears were so great," says another writer, 
'* of the horror, as it was styled, of a Circle, from 
the ceremony and awe which it produced, that she 
pushed all the small sofas, as well as chairs, pell- 
mell about her apartments, so as not to leave even 
a zigzag path of communication free from impedi- 
ment." We have already quoted a pathetic 
description of Mrs Vesey going with her ear-trumpet 
from group to group, as any particular animation 
of countenance struck her eye, and arriving 
generally too late to catch the jest or epigram. 

Fanny Burney relates the following incident, 
which took place at the house of a well-known 
hostess. Lord Harcourt, speaking of the lady 
from whose house he had just come, said : — 

'' * Mrs Vesey is vastly agreeable, but her fear of 
ceremony is really troublesome ; for her eagerness 
to break a circle is such, that she insists upon every- 



186 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

body's sitting- with backs one to another ; that 
is, the chairs are drawn into little parties of 
three together, in a confused manner, all over 
the room. . .' 

" Oh, I like the notion of all things,' cried Mrs 
Cholmondeley, ' I shall certainly adopt it ! ' 

" And then she drew her chair into the 
middle of our circle, Lord Harcourt turned his 
round, and his back to most of us, and my father 
did the same. You can't imagine a more absurd 
sight. . ." 

And there are many other references in con- 
temporary memoirs to hostesses pulling about 
chairs and planting people in groups with dexterous 
disorder. 

This method obviously promoted individual 
initiative and encouraged variety ; it allowed move- 
ment, so essential a feature in pleasant social life ; 
it made for ease and informality. But at the same 
time it had defects equally obvious. 

The groups were disintegrated ; there was no 
central interest ; and it was impossible for the 
hostess to direct or control any main stream of con- 
versation. Horace Walpole, who had a sincere 
friendship for Mrs Vesey, yet calls her parties 
" Babels " ; and with some justice, if every separate 
group was discussing a different topic at the same 
time. But contemporary evidence insists, as we 
have seen, upon Mrs Vesey having such gifts of 
personality that she was able to fuse together the 



THE SQUARING OF THE CIRCLE 187 

discordant elements : and after all there are no 
limits to the magic of sympathy. 

The Square yet remains to be described — a 
somewhat unusual arrangement. Fanny Burney 
is again our authority. She has been asked to 
meet Soame Jenyns" an old wit" at Mrs Ord's. 
She finds a room full of company seated square ; 
that is close to the wainscot, leaving a vacancy in 
the middle of the apartment sufficient for dancing 
three or four cotillons. When she entered every- 
one, contrary to all present custom, stood up — 
as if to see the sight !...'* They all still kept 
staringly upright till Mr Jenyns, who was full 
dressed in a court suit, of apricot-coloured silk, lined 
with satin, made all the slow speed in his power 
from the other end of the room to accost me : and 
he then — could he do less thus urged ? — began an 
harangue the most elegantly complimentary. . ." 
Mrs Ord used also to make her guests draw their 
chairs round a table in the centre of the room ; she 
was a great believer in this shape of intercourse — 
which, however, suggests a dinner-party without 
any dinner. 

The Method of the Circle and the Method of its 
Disintegration are open to the same objection ; the 
mechanism is too apparent. Lacking the ideal 
hostess, there must be certain rules and regulations ; 
but the Blue-Stocking ones were a little too 
anxious, too insistent. Conversation, we fancy, 
does not require so cumbersome a geometry for 



188 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

its support. Geometry applied to the garden robs 
the flowers of all their native grace ; and Conversa- 
tion, the flower of Personality, becomes equally self- 
conscious if trained to grow carpet-wise in squares, 
triangles, crescents, and circles. 



MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 

(1727-1801) 

^^7E are all familiar with Miss Pinkerton's 
^ ^ Academy at Chiswick Mall, which, it is to 
be presumed, gave colour to such divers characters 
as Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley : though it is 
somewhat perplexing to explain how the same 
environment could have developed such conspicuous 
specimens of the gaudy and the scentless flower. The 
claims to distinction possessed by Miss Pinkerton, 
— that '* Semiramis of Hammersmith " — were that 
she had been the friend of Dr Johnson and even 
the correspondent of Mrs Chapone herself. Mrs 
Chapone's name is thus singled out among educa- 
tional authorities as the one best able to give 
" tone " to the Academy ; to impart a flavour of 
dignity to the curriculum, and to touch the 
establishment with the lustre of her reputation. 

Miss Pinkerton is not alone in bracketing the 
names of Dr Johnson and Mrs Chapone. They 
are bound still more closely together in the files of 
T/ie Rambler. Dr Johnson's choice of his few 
collaborators in this venture is very significant. 
He himself wrote all The Rambler (which ran from 

1749 to 1752) with the exception of four letters in 

189 



190 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

No. lo by Mrs Chapone ; No. 30 by Catherine 
Talbot (Elizabeth Carter's friend); No 97 by Samuel 
Richardson; and No. 44 and 100 by Elizabeth 
Carter. 

But it is by her Letters on the Improvement of 
the Mind, addressed to her niece, that Mrs 
Chapone is principally remembered. 

It is surprising to find that this exponent of 
Eighteenth Century propriety was very far from 
accepting in her youth the standards of con- 
temporary convention. She had a mind of some 
originality and the courage of her opinions. 
Writing to Mrs Carter, of all people — whose 
favourite author Johnson was — she stigmatises 
Rasselas 2Js> "an ill-contrived, unfinished, unnatural 
and uninstructive tale." Then she enjoyed 
argument for the sake of argument, and married a 
poor man for love against all the accepted canons. 
And yet she lacked the final daring of carrying 
many of her views to a logical conclusion ; the 
spirit of the age was too strong for her ; and we 
have seldom met with a more curious dabbler in 
ingenious compromise. 

She was of an ardent, emotional temperament, a 
little afraid indeed, of the strength of her emotions. 
For instance, when she meets Mrs Montagu by 
Mrs Carter's introduction, she writes : "I begin to 
love her so much that I am quite frightened at it, 
being conscious my own insignificance will 
probably always keep me at a distance that is not 



MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 191 

at all convenient for loving." This is very different 
from the diffidence of Fanny Burney, which, after 
all, sprang largely from an excess of self-conscious- 
ness. On the subject of the emotion of love 
Hester Mulso (afterwards Mrs Chapone) considered 
herself an authority, and she appears to have had 
good reason for this statement. Writing to Mrs 
Carter, she says : ''Mrs Montagu, entre nous, is an 
ignoramus on this subject, as I have observed on 
many occasions, nor are you quite an adept. It is 
the only subject in the world of which I think 
myself a better judge than either of you." Her 
emotional capacities gave her artistic susceptibility ; 
though wholly untrained, she had much natural 
taste in music, and a sweet powerful voice, and she 
was able to draw sufficiently well to make an 
*' exceedingly like " portrait of Elizabeth Carter 
for Samuel Richardson, the novelist. The drawing 
was done without Mrs Carter's knowledge, but this 
lady was informed, that, as he could not possibly 
wear it in his snuff-box, she need not be scand- 
alised. 

Hester Mulso had a great enthusiasm for genius, 
and it was through her worship of Clarissa that she 
became the novelist's friend : he delighted in her 
sprightly conversation, and called her ''a little spit- 
fire." " Excellent Miss Mulso," he begins a letter 
to her. ''Richardson," says Mrs Barbauld, "lived 
in a kind of flower garden of ladies. They were 
his inspirers, his critics, his applauders." 



192 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

But this enthusiast, this strong advocate in her 
earlier years of the importance of love in marriage, 
could lay claim to neither beauty nor any charm 
save that arising out of entire unaffectedness, 
extraordinary vitality, a sanguine disposition, and a 
keen sense of humour. Contemporary evidence, 
speaking generally, describes her as of an un- 
common ugliness. She writes of herself as . . . ." 
a poor gentlewoman that never was guilty of more 
than four poor odes, and yet is as careless, as 
awkward and as untidy as if she had made as many 
heroic poems as the great and majestic Black- 
more." In Fanny Burney's Early Diary [1782], 
when Mrs Chapone was fifty- five, we read: "We 
.... went one evening last week to the Dean of 
Winchester's where we met Mrs Chapone, who 
looked less forbidding than usual ; but she is deadly 
ugly to be sure — such (an) African nose and lips, 
and such a clunch figure ! ' Poor Chappy ! She's 
so ugly you know ! ' Mr Seward says." This, how- 
ever, was not Richardson's opinion, nor does her 
portrait confirm it. There is a curious coloured 
drawing by Miss Highmore, which represents 
Richardson reading the manuscript of Sir Charles 
Grandison to his friends in the grotto of his house 
at North End, Hammersmith, in 1751. The 
"grotto" is simply a room leading up by three 
steps to a gravel path bordered by evergreens. 
Hester Mulso occupies the centre of the drawing, 
and her expression shows " that intelligent sweet- 




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MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 193 

ness " which Richardson describes " as shining 
out" in the countenance of Miss Mulso. Perhaps 
her ugliness increased with age. She seems to 
have been beloved by her friends for qualities that 
were rooted directly in her century, " an uncommon 
solidity and exactness of understanding," '' a lively, 
agreeable, turn of conversation,"' "good sense, 
talents," and conduct governed by the best and 
noblest principles. 

Hester Mulso was born at Twywell, Northampton, 
in 1727, and kept house for her father after he 
became a widower. She appears to have been 
largely self-taught. Whilst staying with an Aunt 
at Canterbury she made the acquaintance of 
Elizabeth Carter (1745) with whom she kept up an 
extensive correspondence, and for whose character 
she had the highest admiration. Her early letters 
to Mrs Carter contain a clear picture of Hester 
Mulso 's character, and throw many interesting 
sidelights upon Richardson and his circle. She 
writes, for instance, to Mrs Carter from Richardson's 
house. North End : — 

" Mr Richardson was all goodness to us, and 
his health being better than usual enabled him to 
read and talk to us a great deal with cheerfulness, 
which never appears more amiable than in him. We 
had a visit while there from your friend Mr Johnson 
and poor Mrs Williams. I was charmed with 
his behaviour to her, which was like that of a fond 
13 



194 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

father to his daughter. ... Mr Johnson . . . did 
me the honour to address most of his discourse 
to me. I had the assurance to dispute with him 
on the subject of human maHgnity." 

Such a disputation would have been quite after 
Hester Mulso's heart : she loves to argue with Mrs 
Carter on such subjects as whether evil is only 
negative ; she enjoys defending Richardson against 
Mrs Carter's prejudice in favour of Fielding. But 
her most interesting "amicable controversy" was 
with her honoured friend, Mr Richardson himself, 
on the subject of Clarissa's filial obedience. Her 
letters to him have been published, and make enter- 
taining reading. They belong to the years 1 7 50- 1 7 5 1 , 
and foreshadow her Matrimonial Creed, which is a 
triumph of casuistry. 

Clarissa Harlowe's case might certainly be con- 
sidered a test case, for on the one hand we have 
the most unscrupulous tyranny, and on the other 
hand, dutifulness struggling against inclination, 
modesty, and a sense of right. That the attitude 
of her parents could have been capable of any 
defence even by the novelist himself seems to us 
appalling ; but he may have remembered that 
he was writing to a somewhat headstrong and 
emotional girl, and have aimed his logic rather at 
Hester Mulso than at Clarissa Harlowe. 

Richardson, Hester Mulso held, advocated an 
obedience to parents too rigorous and too servile. 



MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 195 

She was willing to admit freely many of 
Richardson's premisses ; it never entered her head 
to suppose a child at liberty to dispose of herself in 
marriage ; she only argued for the negative. But 
she insisted that Clarissa was both reasonable and 
just in disclaiming authority which was made use 
of not to promote her happiness, but to make her 
miserable. " Under these circumstances," she says, 
" why is she continually represented as afflicting 
her soul with remorse and fear ? " A marriage with 
Solmes " would have involved Clarissa in guilt as 
well as unhappiness ; a guilt very little, if at all, short 
of sole?nn perjury before the altar of God!' So we 
have the curious paradox that though a child is not 
at liberty to dispose of herself in marriage, yet 
obedience to parents may be a crime ; and further- 
more, that parents are as a rule quite unworthy 
of the obedience which she holds is due to 
them. 

'* . . . I must have dreamt (for I did not invent 
it) that those marriages which are made up by the 
parents are generally (amongst people of quality or 
great fortune) mere Smithfield bargains, so much 
ready money for so much land, and my daughter 
flung into the bargain ! I must have been asleep 
when I fancied I heard experienced people talk of 
an honourable engagement with a person of small 
fortune, however worthy, however suitable by birth, 
merit and temper, as madness and folly!' 



196 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

It is not quite clear when Hester Mulso met *' an 
attorney named Chapone " at Richardson's, but in 
this passage we fancy we read some inspiration of 
personal feeling. Mr Chapone was introduced to 
Richardson by Mrs Dewes, Mrs Delany's sister ; 
she describes him as *'a remarkably sober, good 
young man ; his father a very worthy clergyman." 

We see in these letters on Filial Obedience a 
mind held in the trammels of a convention, loosen- 
ing a knot here and there, unable to free itself, 
struggling, yet accepting its bonds. 

The struggle becomes more conspicuous and 
more painful in the Matrimonial Creed. Clarissa's 
is an extreme case — an "awful example" of the 
dano^er of filial obedience ; but in normal instances 
no doubt there is a good deal to be said for the 
guidance of parents when marriage is contemplated. 
It is much more difficult for a speculative and ventur- 
ous soul to reconcile itself with the creed of man as 
Lord and Master in married life. Yet in her *' Letter 
to a new married Lady" published 1777, this is 
the Creed Mrs Chapone definitely professes. Like 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu she holds in theory 
that man is the superior creation, and that the wife's 
whole duty is submission to his will. The woman's 
personality is to be sunk not only in the interests, 
but even in the inclinations of the man. In earlier 
life Hester Mulso reconciles this doctrine with her 
love of independence by an extraordinary method 
of compromise. In her Matrimonial Creed, she 



MRS CHAPOXE (HESTER MULSO) 197 

first asserts her premiss, and then proceeds to 
demoHsh it, piece by piece. We give a few clauses 
of this curious composition : — 

"(i) I beHeve that a husband has a divine 
rieht to the absolute obedience of his wife 
in all cases where the first duties do 
not interfere ; and that as her appointed 
ruler and head, he is undoubtedly her 
superior. . . . 

" (2) I believe it expedient that every woman 
should chuse for her husband one whom she 
can heartily and willingly acknowledge her 
superior, and whose judgment and under- 
standing she can prefer to her own. . . 

" (3) Notwithstanding this acknowledged super- 
iority of right of command, I believe it 
highly conducive and to delicate minds, 
absolutely necessary to conjugal happiness, 
that the husband have such an opinion of 
his wife's understanding, principles and 
integrity of heart as would induce him to 
exalt her to the rank of his first and 
dearest friend. . . . 

" (4) In order to preserve this friendship perfect 
and entire, I believe it necessary that all 
such inequality and subjection as must 
check and restrain that unbounded con- 
fidence and frankness which are the 
essence of friendship, be laid aside or 
suffered to sleep." 



198 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

In a word : Man is the superior ; but a woman 
must be very careful to choose a man who is 
superior to herself. There is inequality ; but it is 
absolutely necessary to the happiness of delicate 
minds that there should be equality. Hester Mulso 
does not know how to abstain from setting up her 
nine-pin of convention ; and she sets it up again 
and again, only to knock it down. Yet to her own 
age there appeared no inconsistency, since on every 
hand we find her lauded for her ''uncommon exact- 
ness of understanding." 

We have already made allusion to the drawing 
by Miss Highmore, which represents Richardson 
reading Sir Charles Grandison to his friends, and 
to the fact that Hester Mulso occupies the central 
position in the picture. Hester Mulso, we may 
remark, had a very high opinion of this novel. ** I 
apprehend it will occasion the kingdom being over- 
run with old maids. It will give the women an 
idea of perfection in a man which they never had 
before, and which none of the pretty fellows they 
are so fond of could ever have furnished them 
with." 

Now the position of importance occupied by 
Hester Mulso in this picture has a peculiar 
appropriateness. For not only is she associated 
with Richardson's work as a contemporary 
sympathiser with Clarissa in her revolt ; her connec- 
tion with the novels is of a more close and intimate 
kind, if, as Mrs Delany reports, he took her as a 



MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 199 

model for his greatest characters. The suggestion 
is made by Mrs Donnellan, a friend of Mrs 
Delany's : — 

*' Donnellan commends Miss Mulso's letters, but 
does not so well like the young woman, that is, 
she admires her sense and ingenuity, but thinks 
her only second-rate as \.o politeness ofmannei^\ and 
that Richardson's high admiration for her has 
made him take her as a model for his greatest 
characters, and that is the reason they are not 
really so polished as he takes them to be/' 

There speaks the Eighteenth Century and its 
preoccupation with les graces ! Hester Mulso was 
of good family, but she tells us herself that she was 
careless, awkward and untidy ; her love of disputa- 
tion may have been considered a little forward by 
the grandes dames of the time, and her independ- 
ence of manner had been fostered perhaps by her 
becoming at a very early age mistress of her 
father's house. But Richardson himself was of 
tradesman stock, and continued a tradesman to the 
end, retaining throughout his life the prejudices, 
the conventions, and the limitations of his class. 
The lack of polish in Richardson's characters may 
have sprung from his inability to appreciate Miss 
Mulso's refinement, quite as much as from Miss 
Mulso's failure to reach Mrs Donnellan's standard. 
Richardson, we may add, once asked Mrs 
Donnellan to point out to him any errors he had 



200 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

made in Sir Charles Grandison concerning the 
manners of the aristocracy. This severe censor 
picked so many holes in the work, that the dis- 
couraged Richardson muttered he had better 
forthwith throw it into the fire. 

When Hester Mulso became engaged to Mr 
Chapone, it was with Httle hope of concluding a 
speedy marriage. There were grave financial diffi- 
culties in the way. The union finally took place in 
1760 when Hester was thirty-five years old. We 
cannot be certain that she was happy ; her family 
insist upon the point, but Mrs Barbauld is said to 
have reported otherwise, and the fact that her later 
writings appear to favour so exclusively the 
mariage de convenance might suggest that her own 
experience of a love match did not fulfil all ideals. 
In any case, the marriage was of short duration. 
Chapone died at the end of ten months, and the 
sorrow of this nearly killed his wife. Mrs Montagu 
writes to Mrs Carter in 1761 : — 

" I am indeed grieved at the heart for Mrs 
Chapone ; all calamities are light in comparison of 
the loss of what one loves, uniquement ; after that 
dear object is lost . . . the soft and quiet pleasures 
are over, business may employ and diversions 
amuse the mind, but the soul's calm sunshine and 
the heartfelt joy can never be regained. Mrs 
Chapone has great virtues, and if she has the 
martyr's sufferings, will have the martyr's reward." 



MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 201 

Mrs Chapone was left with a small income, and 
spent much of her time at the houses of friends. 
Like so many of the ladies of the Blue-Stocking 
coteries, she had many connections in the church ; 
she visited for long periods her uncle, the Bishop 
of Winchester. Mrs Delany writes somewhat 
indignantly to her niece, "The late Bishop of 
Winchester allowed her £20 a year out of his 
annual income of above ^6000, and has only added 
^30 a year more for her life." 

While Mrs Chapone was staying with her second 
brother, who was a clergyman in Yorkshire, that 
affectionate interest in her niece was awakened, 
which resulted in the Letters. These were published 
in 1772, and dedicated to Mrs Montagu, by whom 
they had been corrected, with "some strokes of 
your elegant pen." They were received with 
universal praise. Mrs Delany writes: " It is plain 
truth in an elegant, easy style, and the sentiments 
natural and delicate. ... It sells prodigiously ; 
one should hope from that, that though there are 
many corrupted minds, there are also many ready 
to listen to the voice of the charmer, '' For these 
Letters Mrs Chapone received "but ;^5o/' and 
Walter, the publisher, " made above ^500 of it." 

England produced, in the Eighteenth Century, 
two volumes of Letters on the subject of Education, 
one of which, decried by contemporaries, has become 
a standard work — though not a standard work on 
Education ; and the other, accounted by contempor- 



202 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

aries as a book In value next to the Bible, has 
fallen into utter oblivion. The educational works 
of Maria Edgeworth and of Hannah More belong 
more properly to the Nineteenth Century. 

Although Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, 
and Mrs Chapone's Letters to her Niece, are poles 
apart, yet they have this in common ; they were 
neither of them written in the first instance with 
any definite view to publication, and they both aim 
at training the objects of their interest to a certain 
approved and conventionalised Eighteenth-century 
type. 

Lord Chesterfield desired to build up a perfect 
specimen of the Eighteenth-century Man of the 
World. '' The general opinion of these letters 
among the better sort of men," writes Mrs Delany 
to her brother in 1774, ''is that they are ingenious, 
useful as to polish of manners, but very hurtftd in 
a moral sense. . . . Les graces are the sum total of 
his religion." Dr Johnson remarked more bluntly 
that the Letters taught the " morals of a courtesan 
and the manners ofa dancing master." Our present 
day commentators pronounce a much more favour- 
able verdict Leslie Stephen defends Chesterfield 
from being a mere fribble or rake, and considers 
him a singularly shrewd impartial observer of life, 
possessing the intellectual vigour which implies a 
real desire for ofood administration. Austin 
Dobson says that if you blame Lord Chesterfield 
for worldly wisdom you blame him in company with 



MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 203 

Horace and Cicero, Bolingbroke and La Bruyere, 
De Retz and La Rochefoucauld. Be that as it 
may, Chesterfield's letters set before our eyes his 
model of Eighteenth century perfections : Mrs 
Chapone's Letters present the somewhat narrow 
pattern of womanhood that happened to be the 
ideal of the time — a type prevalent, one might say 
universal, in contemporary fiction, and not without 
a large measure of charm. '' Gentleness, meekness 
and patience, are her (woman's) peculiar distinc- 
tions," says Mrs Chapone. Her aims in her table, 
her dress, and in all other things are to be 
''propriety and neatness,'' and *' elegance if her state 
demands it." 

It is perhaps not very kind, even on this ground 
of similarity, to class Mrs Chapone and Lord 
Chesterfield together. As Mrs Chapone herself 
points out. Lord Chesterfield unweariedly recom- 
mends and enforces the appearances of all that he 
considers engaging — even sweetness of counte- 
nance he thinks may be put on and adjusted at the 
glass, like the rouge and the bouquet : " He 
forgets that those appearances must be the result 
of real excellences which he takes no pains to 
inculcate." The real excellences are what Mrs 
Chapone desires to see cultivated. 

It is, however, a striking fact and illustrative of 
the innate conservatism of English people that at a 
time when new educational theories and experi- 
ments were so much in the air — when Rousseau was 



204 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

writing his Entile, whose every page crashes with 
the breaking of barriers — when Madame de Genlis 
was making her pupils, the sons of the Duke of 
Orleans (Phillippe Egalite) act their history- 
lessons : English writers remain contentedly within 
the narrow circle drawn round them in the past, 
and are not even aware of the vast open spaces 
that lie beyond. 

And yet Mrs Chapone's little volume appeals to 
us for this very reason ; it is so typically Eigh- 
teenth Century, and it has charm, it has simplicity, 
it has sincerity. There is not a trace in it of 
affectation, pretension or patronage. Written at 
the dictates of affection, it reads pleasantly and 
fiowingly ; and undoubtedly it possesses a con- 
siderable measure of sound common-sense. The 
larger proportion of the Letters are concerned with 
the best method of studying the Scriptures, and 
with the cultivation of the moral qualities, and on 
both these points Mrs Chapone has much that is 
excellent to say. It is interesting to note that she 
advocates later in life the examination of the 
evidence of the Christian religion, so that her niece 
may be convinced on rational grounds of its divine 
authority. She warns her niece that St Paul's 
teachings have been " fatally perverted " by com- 
mentators to yield the doctrine of salvation by 
faith alone ; and warmly recommends St James's 
Epistle, which is " entirely practical and ex- 
ceedingly fine." Her religious teaching is, indeed, 



MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 205 

largely ethical ; and although she has read some of 
the mystics, she holds in this book that emotion in 
religion is as much to be avoided as emotion in 
marriage. 

" On the Regulation of the Heart and the 
Affections " ; this chapter, like its title, is full of 
Eighteenth Century atmosphere. The chambers 
of our emotions are to be as neatly ordered and as 
faintly perfumed in lavender as our linen closets : 
reason and principle are to control every nook 
and cranny, and to keep even our virtues from 
their own defects. "Compassion . . . was not 
impressed upon the human heart only to adorn 
the fair face with tears, and to give an agreeable 
languor to the eyes. It was designed to excite 
our utmost endeavour to relieve the sufferer." It 
is only by reading old volumes of this sort that 
we can understand the outcry raised against Mrs 
Thrale's second marriage. '' Romantic notions " 
are here condemned; '' the passions" submitted to 
a strict censorship ; suitability of character, degree 
and fortune made the first condition of happiness. 
Mrs Chapone holds, however, no brief for marriage, 
and bids her niece "not be afraid of a single life." 

It is when we come to Mrs Chapone's curri- 
culum that we feel most strongly the shrinkage 
of horizons. How delightfully accessible has 
knowledge become ! And yet how cribb'd, cabin'd 
and confin'd ! There are indeed large domains 
that it is unsuitable for the young lady to explore ; 



206 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

the abstruse sciences, for instance, and the learned 
languages ; knowledge of these would allow too 
great excuses for pendantry and presumption : but 
— curious inconsistency — the classics offer no 
such temptations for undue boasting if read in 
translation. Poetry, " this enchanting art," is highly 
recommended, "particularly those immortal orna- 
ments of our nation, Shakespeare and Milton." 
Shakespeare is not here hedged about with all the 
limitations Hannah More prescribes. (Hannah 
More does not think it possible, nor does it appear 
necessary — to debar " accomplished and elegantly- 
educated young persons " " from the discriminated, 
the guarded, the qualified perusal of such an author 
as Shakespeare.") But " fictitious stories" are only 
to be read with great caution, since they '* tend to 
inflame the passions of youth whilst the chief 
purposes of education should be to moderate and 
restrain them." 

History, however, universal history, is the one 
study suitable for the female mind. A little 
geography and chronology reduced to the simplest 
equation are useful aids in this study ; for geography, 
a bare adjective helps to keep the characteristics of 
countries in mind. As to chronology, a few leading 
dates — Creation, 4000 B.C., Flood, 2350 B.C., and 
the dates of the four Great Monarchies, will be 
found useful. Universal History itself is not nearly 
so formidable as it sounds. Ancient History is 
contained in UHistoire Ancienne of Rollin, and of 



MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 207 

this only the account of Grecian and Roman 
History need be read with any anxious desire of 
retaining it perfectly ! This book, with Vertot's 
Revolutions Romaznes, gives all that it is absolutely 
necessary to know of ancient history. Modern 
History is almost as easily mastered, though more 
books have to be traversed. As a course of 
History reading, Mrs Chapone's scheme appears to 
be excellent ; but as giving a knowledge of 
universal history, it is, of course, ludicrously 
inadequate. Yet while the dogmatism of the dates 
and of the characterising adjectives strike us as 
simply comic, we must allow that the effort to 
break away from merely local — from English 
history — is commendable, the effort to give the 
pupil some kind of general view, some under- 
standing of the currents and tendencies that make 
the continuity of world-life. But compare Mrs 
Chapone's method with the contemporary method 
adopted by Madame de Genlis for teaching history 
to her royal pupils ! Madame de Genlis antici- 
pated the modern rage for illustration in educa- 
tion — the modern reliance on the dramatic instinct 
in children. She had medallions of the Roman 
Emperors with their dates, painted on the walls 
of the garden pavilion, and scenes from Roman 
history over its doors ; she used a magic lantern, 
with historical slides, which included scenes from 
the history of China and Japan ; she took her pupils 
to museums and the sites of famous events, and made 



208 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

them act in their own persons the historical 
voyages of discovery, and take part in historical 
tableaux. Although she endeavoured to cover too 
much ground, her method is original and alive. 
For methods of Education we must not go to Mrs 
Chapone. The merit of her little book lies in the 
fact that necessary stress is laid upon the formation 
of the moral character, that the cultivation of the 
imagination is given a place in the scheme, and 
that not too much is attempted. 

Mrs Chapone's beloved niece did not live long to 
profit by her aunt's affectionate counsel. She 
married a clergyman and died in child-birth. 

*' How is our Blue Club cut up!" writes Madame 
dArblay in 1801, with reference to the death of Mrs 
Chapone. Mrs Chapone is well acclaimed one of 
the Blue-Stockings ; not only by reason of her 
famous Letters, but by reason of her friendships 
with members of the coterie. We have already 
mentioned the relations of affection that bound her 
to Mrs Carter and to Mrs Delany. She 
accompanied Mrs Montagu on her visit to 
Scotland, stopping at Hagley on the way (Lord 
Lyttleton's place) where, as it was wet, he read 
them part of his History. Mrs Chapone had her 
assemblies too ; rational, instructive, social, but 
apparently somewhat dull. " The meetings, in 
truth, at her dwelling, from her palpable and 
organic deficiency in health and strength for their 
sustenance, though they never lacked of sense or 



MRS CHAPONE (HESTER MULSO) 209 

taste, always wanted spirit," writes Madame 
d'Arblay. 

Mrs Chapone's last years were clouded by money 
difficulties and increasing physical debilities. 

Possessing a character that had in it many 
elements of revolt, a character capable of en- 
thusiasm and of passion, she remains the author 
of the book best suited to Miss Pinkerton's 
Academy : and this at a time when the fundamental 
axiom of Rousseau's Emile was undermining the 
foundations of society : " Prenez le contrepieds de 
I'usage et vous ferez presque toujours bien." 



14 



THE BLUE-STOCKINGS IN PICTURES 

SIR Joshua Reynolds; Hogarth; Rowlandson : 
we have in their work an epitome of the 
Eighteenth Century : of its grace and beauty ; of 
its somewhat primitive moraHty ; of its Rabelaisian 
coarseness. 

The Eighteenth Century has left behind it no 
surpassing body of literature ; it was too circum- 
scribed, too self-satisfied, too occupied with a 
narrow criticism of the immediate. But these 
limitations are no disadvantage to an art that 
concerns itself mainly with the representation of 
material things ; the portrait painter finds all the 
scope he needs for delicate observation in the 
cultivated personalities of the men and women 
around him, while the painter of social life gains 
force and directness by concentration in a small 
compass. 

The great painters that flourished in the Eight- 
eenth Century, unlike most of the great painters of 
our day, occupied themselves principally with the 
life of the time ; they have left us transcripts of 
such exquisite grace and such marvellous fidelity 
that the rough pageantry of those streets has 
become a familiar experience, and the ladies 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN PICTURES 211 

in their floating scarves, gleams of actual 
beauty. 

The Eighteenth Century has, within its some- 
what narrow limits, evolved a type of beauty 
peculiar to itself, a beauty that is another word for 
grace. The stately dances of the day — what are 
they but hymns to grace .-^ And the beauty of 
Sir Joshua's ladies — is it not grace incarnate, a 
subtle harmony and quiet, the poise of perfect ease, 
with a fresh wind stirring the draperies lest the 
sweetness should seem too sweet ? In his pictures 
we find the far-away floating ideal of all those 
wearisome little Manuals of Deportment, all those 
tedious Maxims of Manners, all those dull Treatises 
on Propriety which are so characteristic a feature 
of the age. But surely this cannot be taught — 
this movement of his ladies free as the swaying 
grass, their confidence as alert and delicate as a 
harebell's? Indeed we feel that only the touch 
of a genius most tender and sympathetic could 
transform, as Reynolds does, artificiality into 
spontaneity ; could win such abiding fragrance out 
of flowers grown in hot-house air. '' He is lily- 
sceptred," says Ruskin, "his power blossoms but 
burdens not. " Charm is too heavy a word for his 
airy forms, all faint light and frail draperies — 
enchantment we would rather say — but an enchant- 
ment without mystery and without magic — a spell 
that arrests simply because it is perfect achievement. 
For this Eighteenth Century ideal of womanhood 



212 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

has strict limitations, and one type, varying very 
little, becomes in the end a trifle monotonous. We 
feel at times that the erace is too external — that the 
surroundings, the pose even, suggest the conven- 
tional. If we would attain to invariable sweetness 
and light there must be sacrifices, eliminations — 
sacrifices of character — eliminations of soul. Such 
sacrifices and eliminations were, however, willingly 
made in a century which had for ideal a colourless 
passivity. Miss Reynolds, Sir Joshua's sister, 
writes in her Essay on Taste, '* Perhaps the most 
perfect feminine mind habitually aims at nothing 
higher than an exemption from blame." 

Amoncr the Blue-Stockinofs the one who has 
given us the most charming word-picture of this 
Eighteenth-century ideal, and who approaches it 
most closely in her own person, is Fanny Burney. It 
is greatly to be regretted that the supreme interpreter 
of that ideal should not have painted so appropriate 
a subject. Once when Fanny Burney was dining 
with Sir Joshua Reynolds at his villa on Richmond 
Hill, she became aware that he was looking at her 
with a glance of peculiar intentness. " I know 
what you are thinking about,'' she said. '' Ay," he 
replied, "you may come and sit to me now when- 
ever you please." He had caught her characteristic 
attitude — the secret of her personality. Fanny 
Burney once visioned herself in caricature, touched 
with the humour of the contrast between Dr 
Johnson's rugged figure and her diminutive one. 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN PICTURES 213 

** Dr Johnson /orced TYiG to sit on a very small sofa 
with him, which was hardly large enough for him- 
self; and which would have made a subject for a 
print by Harry Bunbury, which would have diverted 
all London." Harry Bunbury was an acquaintance 
of Fanny Burney's, and an artist of considerable 
wit, who with somewhat too facile pen devoted 
himself chiefly to quizzing the fashionable foibles 
of the day. 

Mrs Thrale, with those " strong points " in 
her face and her expressive eyes, was a less 
happy subject for Sir Joshua's brush ; but in his 
portrait of her, the painter has been very success- 
ful in depriving her of character. She is painted 
with her daughter, and this picture was one of 
the series of eight by the same master, in the 
possession of Mr Thrale, known as the Streatham 
Gallery, and before referred to. 

It is some distance from these graceful, slightly 
conventional visions of Sir Joshua to the sturdy 
realism of Hogarth, with his unrivalled power of 
character-drawino", his fertilitv of invention, his 
enthralling minutiae, and his uncompromising 
morality. His pictures are, as he claimed them 
to be, scenes of a drama, the drama of life ; he 
has painted for us a moving panorama of the 
Eighteenth Century, and peopled it with living, 
shouting, suffering, laughing beings. The salon, 
the boudoir, the theatre, the workshop, the cock- 
pit, the prison cell, the mad-house — these are 



214 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

some of his backgrounds — interiors brimming 
over with observation, with detail ; and he has 
given us scenes in the open air, boisterous, 
exuberant, such as the Fair at SoiUhwark, which 
has been compared to painted noise. If we would 
see Eighteenth-century London in all its brutality 
through the eyes of a grim realist, we must walk 
its streets with Hogarth ; indeed he compels us 
along with him, for he has a harsh lesson to 
teach us : he will show us the Rake's Progress, 
and the Harlot's Progress, the Idle Apprentice 
led to the gallows, and the unfaithful Countess 
drinking her death-draught. Morality, we may 
remark, is much simplified in a world where the 
good and the bad are strikingly differentiated, and 
where rewards and punishments follow appositely 
in accordance with desert. But thus the world 
appears to Hogarth, and in this wise he sets it 
before us. 

A little girl of fourteen was taken by her father, 
who was a friend of the painter's, to a studio 
in Leicester Fields where Hogarth was painting 
the Lady's Last Stake, and was asked to sit to 
him. " You are not fourteen years old yet, I 
think, but you will be twenty-four, and this 
portrait will then be like you," said Hogarth ; 
"'Tis the Lady's last Stake; see how she hesi- 
tates between her money and her honour. ..." 
This little girl afterwards became Mrs Thrale. 
Hogarth was not the one to practise eliminations, 




w 9 



J s 



> --2 



w 
< 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN PICTURES 215 

and the lady in his picture has a most expressive 
countenance. But we doubt if Mrs Thrale at 
the age of twenty-four possessed such good looks. 
Mrs Thrale, in her reminiscences, describes certain 
distinctive traits of the painter. She gives his 
vivid appreciation of Johnson's conversation in 
symbols of his own art : " Mr Hogarth, among 
the variety of kindnesses shown me when I was 
too young to have a proper sense of them, was 
used to be very earnest that I should obtain 
the acquaintance, and, if possible, the friendship 
of Dr Johnson, whose conversation was, to the 
talk of other men, like Titian's paintings com- 
pared to Hudson's." The strong didactic tendency 
of the man is shown in her statement that "his 
discourse generally ended in an ethical disserta- 
tion, and a serious charge to me, never to forget 
his picture of the Lady s Last Staked 

Mrs Delany came into contact with Hogarth 
too. He promised to give her some instructions 
for drawing '* which will be of great use — some 
rules of his own that he says will improve me 
more in a day than a year's learning in the 
common way." It does not appear that the 
matter went further, but the incident would seem 
to suggest that Hogarth, as well as Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, saw considerable talent in Mrs Delany 's 
work. In painting she did nothing original, but 
confined herself to copying the old masters. 
Elizabeth Robinson writes in 1740 : '' Madam 



216 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Pen is copying Sacharissa's picture by Vandyck, 
and does it with all that felicity of genius that 
attends her in all her performances." Sir Joshua 
Reynolds was so much astonished at the force 
of a copy she had made of the Sigismunda 
attributed to Correggio, that he could not believe 
it was done in crayon until Mrs Delany had the 
glass removed that he might examine it closely. 
With such artistic gifts, such delicate appreciation, 
such perfect taste, it is natural to wish it had 
been in her power to collect pictures. She had 
a few. She leaves in her will to Lady Bute a 
picture of the Three Maries after Salvator Rosa, 
and another of the Raising of Lazarus. There 
is one delightful little passage in a letter of hers, 
showing how her thoughts ran in terms of painting 
and poetry. *' Could I have attended to the 
beauties en passant between dear, sweet Ham and 
this place (Sudbury), I should present my dearest 
Mary with such a mixture of pastoral delights as 
would have served a Claude or a Shenstone 
for their whole lives." How would Claude like 
to be bracketed with Shenstone — that most 
artificial of pastoralists ? But Mrs Delany was 
in one sense a patron of art, since she introduced 
the Cornish painter Opie to the notice of George 
III. and Queen Charlotte. By command of their 
Majesties, Opie painted Mrs Delany's portrait — 
a charming and very sincere piece of work. The 
picture was hung in the bedchamber of the King 




i\ 



< £ 5" 



> < tc 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN PICTURES 217 

and Queen at Windsor Castle, and is now at 
Hampton Court. He also painted another portrait 
of Mrs Delany for Lady Bute. 

Mrs Thrale, painted by Reynolds and by 
Hogarth, also appears in a caricature of 
Rowlandson's. It represents a crowd of people 
standinof before the Orchestra at Vauxhall. In 
a supper box at the side are Johnson, Boswell, 
Goldsmith, and Mrs Thrale. 

The position of the caricaturist was one of 
immense influence during the latter half of the 
Eighteenth century, and his deformities of human 
beings, amazingly vital, extraordinarily clever in 
execution, and often very coarse, must take their 
stand in any picture of the age beside the half-ideal 
portraits of Sir Joshua, and the breathing realities 
of Hogarth. 

A visionary beauty, limited in sphere ; an 
exuberant variety of exaggerated ugliness ; and 
between these, a portraiture of reality in myriad 
phases made to subserve a strong moral purpose ; 
so, perhaps, we may represent the Eighteenth 
Century under the symbols of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
Hogarth, and Rowlandson. 

What is the pictorial record of the Queen 
of the Blues? Mrs Montagu was too assiduous a 
follower of the fashion to be a discerning patroness 
of art. She bought Chinese vases because they 
were the rage, and her Room of Cupidons 
reads strongly suggestive of Boucher. Angelica 



218 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Kauffman did a celling for her because it 
was the correct thing to have a ceiHng done 
by Angelica Kauffman : and for the same 
reason Mrs Montagu employed " Mr Adams " 
to design her a ceiling and a chimney-piece and 
doors, " which are pretty enough to make me a 
thousand enemies." 

So also Mrs Montagu was painted by Sir Joshua 
because everyone of any pretension was painted 
by this master. But her position of eminence is 
best exemplified in a large portrait group, — the fifth 
picture in the series of six painted by the Irish 
painter Barry for the Great Room of the Society 
of Arts in John Street, Adelphi. 

Barry's is a tragic story. He had unbounded 
confidence in his own powers, fierce pride, and an 
unhappy temper that made his course through 
life full of difficulties. He undertook to paint 
these pictures to vindicate the position of English 
art with an almost heroic disregard of ways and 
means. They were begun in 1777, and continued 
till 1781, the painter meanwhile supporting himself 
with etching. The Society of Arts appears to have 
behaved with generosity, but Barry proudly insisted 
on dying of hunger in a garret. 

The pictures still hang in the Great Room — 
historical and allegorical subjects — vast in size, 
ambitious in design. We are only concerned 
with the fifth of the series, which represents " The 
Society." The picture includes a great number of 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN PICTURES 219 

figures and groups ; the then President, Lord 
Romney — the Prince of Wales — noblemen — 
men of science, like William Locke and Dr Hunter 
— wits like Soame Jenyns — orators like Burke. 
Almost in the centre of the picture, with the 
light full on her, is Mrs Montagu. She is in 
profile, stooping a little as was her wont, and 
looking up while she fingers some rich brocade. 
Her hair, which is a chestnut brown, is rolled 
back off her forehead and dressed over a small 
cushion. A black scarf is thrown over the back 
of the head, and knotted at the throat ; she wears 
a cape of white muslin, frilled, and her skirt is 
of a dull red colour. The profile of her face is 
very sharp, she has a long straight nose, and heavy 
eyelids. It is a clever face, full of animation, 
strength and intelligence. The groups in the 
picture are disconnected, and consequently the 
whole lacks unity, but there is one slight incident 
which concerns itself with Mrs Montagu — '* that 
distinguished example of female excellence who 
long honoured the Society with her name and 
subscription." Two Duchesses are standing near 
her, the Duchess of Rutland and the Duchess 
of Devonshire, and between them is Doctor 
Johnson — a most flattering portrait of the Doctor 
— "pointing out this example of Mrs Montagu 
to their Graces' attention and imitation." This 
was of course before Mrs Montagu's serious quarrel 
with Johnson ; it is one of life's little ironies that 



220 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

he should be represented through all time dis- 
tinguishing before all the world this lady of 
whose intellect he so constantly spoke with 
disrespect, though he did justice to her 
benevolence. 

Horace Walpole disliked both Dr Johnson and 
Mrs Montagu, and it is therefore perhaps not 
surprising that the picture should have excited his 
ire — his aristocratic ire — the more so, as when he 
wrote, the Lyttleton controversy had taken place. 
To William Mason he says : " Yes, I have told 
you that Barry has apotheosised you. . . . There 
are two gentlewomen, too, who I believe will stare 
as much as you at the company in which they find 
themselves. Had they been hurried into Charon's 
hoy at once, they could not be more surprised at 
the higgledi-piggledyhood that they would meet 
there. In short, these two poor gentlewomen are 
the Duchesses of Devonshire and Rutland, who 
this new Master of the ceremonies to Queen Fame 
has ordered that well-bred usher to the Graces, Dr 
Johnson, to present to Mrs Vice Queen Montagu 
under whose tuition they are to be placed, and 
who is recommended to them as a model to 
copy." He goes on to say that they are 
" knotted into such a mob of heads that you 
would think them crowding out of Ranelagh, 
and so unlike they are, that I did not know 
which was which." 

It must be confessed that a good many of the 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN PICTURES 221 

heads are wooden ; but Mrs Montagu's does not 
come in this category : and it is pleasant to have 
this striking, if fanciful record, of the position that 
the greatest of Blue-Stocking hostesses occupied 
among her contemporaries. 



FANNY BURNE Y (MADAME D ARBLAY) 

1752-1840 

RAPTUROUS and most innocent happiness 
during anonymous success." So in old age 
Madame D' Arblay endorsed one of her own letters 
written when her novel Evelina was in the full tide 
of its triumph. 

Of this rapturous and most innocent happiness 
of the author in a success, Fanny Burney has left 
an account more complete and more detailed than 
any in our literary history. Her journal records 
every slightest word of praise lavished upon the 
novel, records every flattering speculation as to its 
authorship, records every tremor of emotion she 
experienced when her responsibility came gradually 
to be known. In the description she gives of her 
thrills of alarmed modesty, of her blushes and her 
silence, of her running out of the room when the 
praise became too excessive to be borne, we 
recoo'nise the Eighteenth- century young lady, the 
creator of Evelina, lively, high-spirited and 
obviously fulfilling in her own person and to her 
own satisfaction all the demands of a highly- 
conventionalised ideal of womanhood. Austin 
Dobson says that the greatest debt of gratitude we 
owe to Fanny Burney is that she prepared the way 




MISS BURXEY 

(MADAME d'aRBI.AY) 
FROM A PORTRAIT BY EDWARD I'.URXEY 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D ARBLAY) 223 

for Jane Austen. Certainly the character of 
Evelina combines in an eminent degree the 
qualities of "sense" and ''sensibility," to be so 
admirably dissected by the later novelist. Evelina 
is in essence a delicate study of topical sensitive- 
ness. The charm, the appeal, the success of the 
book — for us of this age at least — consist in the 
heroine's subtle apperceptions of, and dainty 
emergence from the equivocal positions in which 
she is placed. The character-drawing, so greatly 
admired by Fanny Burney's contemporaries — Dr 
Johnson calls her a " character-monger" — appears 
to us a little crude : the machinery of the plot is 
very clumsy : but the book has perennial life, not 
only as a brilliant chronicle of manners but 
because it embodies the charm of a certain type 
of womanhood. Evelina is the product of an 
artificial age, living under and obeying artificial 
conditions ; but the atmosphere is so natural to her 
that she breathes and moves in it with perfect ease 
and freedom, and brings with her such freshness 
that its overcharged perfumes acquire something 
of the fragrance of wild violets. 

Evelina was published when Fanny Burney was 
twenty-six — she was born in 1752. But already 
she had had unusual opportunities for observation ; 
already she had had no small practice in the literary 
craft. 

Her father, Dr Burney, the most fashionable 
music-master in London, by reason of his eminence 



224 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

as musician and author, and even more by reason 
of his charm of personaHty, attracted to his house 
a large circle of notable people. *' 1 love Burney," 
said Dr Johnson, "my heart goes out to meet him. 
. . . Dr Burney is a man for all the world to love." 
Garrick also was an intimate familiar at the Burney 
house, I (now 35) St Martin's Street. Most of 
the great singers of the day came to sing at Dr 
Burney's Sunday entertainments, which brought to 
the house many guests eminent in other directions. 
Mr Crisp of Chessington, an old family friend 
to whom Fanny used to send long chronicle letters, 
writes with reference to one of these parties : '' You 
have produced such an illustrious assembly of 
princes and generals, and lords and ladies, and wits 
and pictures, and diamonds and shoulder knots, 
that I feel myself shrink into nothing at the idea 
of them." To this '' Second Daddy " of hers 
Fanny forwarded anecdotes, "conversation pieces, 
costume descriptions, character sketches ; she also 
kept an elaborate journal, and wrote down stories 
almost from the cradle. These early manuscripts 
she destroyed when only fourteen in a great 
bonfire, moved thereto by the representations of 
her step-mother on the foolishness of idle 
scribbling. But the instinct was too strong to 
be thus suppressed. Her life was a full one, for 
her father employed her constantly as amanuensis 
in the composition of his History of Music ; and 
Evelina was written in snatched moments on odd 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 225 

scraps of paper. She managed to arrange and 
transcribe her novel while her father was away 
on a continental tour collecting further material 
for his book. Her brother Charles, more as a 
frolic than anything else, negotiated the publication 
of her novel, the authorship of which was to remain 
a profound secret. Mr Lowndes of Fleet Street 
offered ^20 for the manuscript — '*an offer," she 
writes, "which was accepted with alacrity; and 
boundless surprise at its magnificence ! " The 
book was published in 1778, and made its way 
slowly at first ; it was six months before Dr 
Burney read it. But then he wrote, after he had 
become aware of the authorship, ''What will all 
this come to ? Where will it end ? and when and 
how shall I wake from the vision of such splendid 
success? for I hardly know how to believe it real." 
After this, it is not so much Evelina's triumph, as 
Fanny's triumph and Fanny's sensations that are 
recorded in her journals and letters. When Dr 
Burney announces in a letter his intention of reveal- 
ing the authorship oi Evelina to Mrs Thrale, Fanny 
w^rites, '' I shook so when I read it, that had any- 
body been present I must have betrayed myself." 
Diffidence and modesty may have been to a 
large extent natural to her, but she so emphasises 
their attractions that she must undoubtedly have 
cultivated the expression of these qualities on 
every possible occasion. She reports Dr Johnson 
as having said to Mrs Thrale : " Modesty with her 
15 



226 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

is neither pretence nor decorum ; 'tis an ingredient 
of her nature . . ." and Horace Walpole, writing 
in 1785, gives like testimony . . . '' She, half and 
half sense and modesty, which possess her so 
entirely that not a cranny is left for affectation or 
pretension. Oh ! Mrs Montagu," he goes on, 
**you are not above half as accomplished." Then 
her extreme " facilite a rougir " lent colour to her 
reputation for sensitiveness. The occasions which 
made call upon her modesty were, according to her 
own account, incessant. Yet her enjoyment is so 
young and so fresh that in spite of some monotony 
her Diary makes exhilarating reading, and when 
she touches upon the prominent figures of the 
age, its interest becomes considerable. She writes: 
'' But Mrs Thrale ! She — she is the goddess of 
my idolatry ! what an dloge is hers ! " And again 
. . . " But Dr Johnson's approbation! ... it almost 
crazed me with agreeable surprise — it gave me 
such a flight of spirits that I danced a jig to 
Mr Crisp, without any preparation, music, or 
explanation — to his no small amazement and 
diversion." Forty-eight years later she told Sir 
Walter Scott that this jig was danced round 
a mulberry-tree in the garden at Chessington. 
The mulberry-tree is there to this day. 

A word as to her personal appearance. It was 
singularly in keeping with the extreme sensitiveness 
she portrays in her record. She had a '' speaking " 
face, that derived its attraction from the rapid play 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 227 

of expression rather than from beauty of feature. 
She was short in stature, brown in complexion, and 
very slenderly made. " What a slight piece of 
machinery is the terrestrial part of thee, our 
Fannikin ! " . . . writes Mr Crisp. Her eyes — 
doves' eyes Mrs Streatfield called them, pre- 
sumably because they were greenish-grey, Fanny 
suggests — were short-sighted, and the consequence 
was she stooped somewhat. She retained her 
girlish appearance into middle life. 

We now come to '* the most consequential day I 
have spent since my birth " — namely the day of 
her visit to the Thrales at Streatham, and the 
practical beginning of her friendship with Dr 
Johnson. 

Of Dr Johnson the worst and best has been so 
minutely written by contemporaries that at first we 
are overwhelmed in their particularity of detail, 
and as trait after trait is flashed before us our 
judgment remains suspended between the repulsive 
and the admirable. It is only after a time, when 
we have removed ourselves from the conflicting 
throne of little facts, and look back, that we 
see in perspective the real contour of that im- 
posing personality in all its greatness. " Suppose 
Mount Athos carved," says Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning : — 

"To some colossal statue of a man, 
The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear, 
Had guessed as little as the browsing goats 



228 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Of form or feature of humanity 

Up there — in fact had travelled five miles off 

Or ere the giant image broke on them, 

Full human profile, nose and chin distinct 

Mouth, muttering rhythms of silence up the sky 

And fed at evening with the blood of suns. . . ." 

And yet it is the brushwood, and the jagged 
stones, and the grasses, and the Hchen that give 
in distance colour, and even form ; and Fanny 
Burney's details have contributed in no slight 
degree to softening the harshness of outline in this 
colossal statue of a man. 

The Dr Johnson of Boswell is to all intents 
and purposes the Dr Johnson of Fleet Street : the 
Fleet Street atmosphere, the coffee-house atmo- 
sphere, seems to cling to him wherever he goes. 
So close has the association become, so living is 
the picture presented by Boswell, that Dr Johnson's 
name immediately evolves Eighteenth-century 
London, and his friends and associates detach 
themselves with vivid distinctness from the crowds 
that throng the streets. But Boswell had small 
opportunity for studying Johnson at Streatham 
Place, where the Doctor passed so large a portion 
of his later years, and Mrs Thrale has failed in her 
Anecdotes to give any clear impression of the 
Doctor's personality. Fanny Burney, therefore, 
remains our chief source of information on this 

\ most interesting period of Johnson's life. 

^ Fanny was now nearing the full tide of success, 






FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 229 

and everything was seen through a glamour of 
happiness. Streatham Place she describes briefly 
as white, and very pleasantly situated in a fine 
paddock. Mrs Thrale captured her affections at 
once — ''she is all unaffected drollery and sweet 
good-humour," she writes. Natural liveliness, 
sweetness of disposition, general benevolence, a 
rare union of gaiety and feeling — such are the 
qualities that Fanny attributes to her friend. As 
to Dr Johnson, he appears in an entirely new 
light. His great figure seems to have been more 
at ease in these spacious surroundings than in 
the cramped coffee-house parlours, and his whole 
attitude and conversation breathe an air of well- 
being unusual to his melancholy and gloomy 
nature. In consequence w^e find him "facetious," 
"extremely comical" — insisting that Miss Burney 
must have a rasher for her supper, and in sheer 
exuberant farce challenging Thrale to get drunk 
with him. From the very first he took a liking 
for Fanny, and not only championed Evelina, and 
her second novel, Cecilia, with all the weight of his 
authority, but flattered her by his constant attentions 
and desire for her company. On the point of 
ladies' dress he was most fastidious, and she was 
even happy enough to please him in this matter. 
This was the more surprising, since the question 
of dress was throughout her life something of a 
trouble to her. " She was always working at her 
clothes," a contemporary tells us; and she herself 



S30 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

writes of " the perpetual replenishment they require, 
which practically occupies every moment I spend 
out of company." 

Boswell dwelt upon the Doctor's physical dis- 
abilities ^and habits for the sake of photographic 
accuracy ; Mrs Thrale dwelt upon them in self- 
justification, and to glorify her own forbearance ; 
but Fanny Burney, though she mentions, does not 
dwell upon his peculiarities. She saw in him 
**as great a souled man as a bodied one, and 
were he less furious in his passions, he would be 
demi-divine." 

Fanny Burney was always received with affection 
by Dr Johnson at Bolt Court, and she writes that 
she finds him '* more instructive, entertaining, 
good-humoured, and exquisitely fertile than ever." 
On another occasion when she made breakfast for 
him he welcomed her with open arms and called 
her '* dearest of all ladies." When he was on his 
death-bed she spent long hours at the house in the 
vain hope that she might be allowed to see him 
before the end. There seems to have been real 
affection between these two oddly assorted mortals, 
and her memory is kept green partly by its 
connection with this perennially vital old man. 

But not only Dr Johnson acclaimed her genius. 
She was welcomed at all great assemblies of the 
day, not by reason of her father's popularity, but on 
account of her own shining merits. " Now that I 
am invited to Mrs Montagu's I think the measure 



J 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 231 

of my glory full!" she writes. Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
too considerate to let her hear her own praises but 
through others, as she tells us, was always picking 
up some anecdote to prove in what esteem her 
novels were held. Burke made her many most 
eloquent compliments on Cecilia " too delicate 
either to shock or sicken the nicest ear," she 
says. When finally she was introduced by Mrs 
Chapone to the Duchess of Portland and Mrs 
Delany, she reports these ladies as uttering page 
after page of the most extravagant eulogium. 
These conversations make curious, and not quite 
convincing reading. Take a few random excerpts 
as examples: Fhe Duchess of Portland: ''Cry, 
to be sure we did. Oh, Mrs Delany, shall you 
ever forget how we cried ? But then we had so 
much laughter to make us amends, we were never 
left to sink under our concern. . . ." 

''For my part," said Mrs Chapone, ''when I 
first read it, I did not cry at all. I was in an 
agitation that half killed me, that shook all my 
nerves, and made me unable to sleep at nights, 
for the suspense I was in ; but I could not cry 
from excess of eagerness. . . ." 

And so on for pages. 

" No book," said Mrs Delany (as reported by 
Fanny Burney), " ever was so useful as this, because 
none other that is so good was ever so much read." 

We cannot but feel that Lady Llanover may 
have some justification for her statement that Fanny 



232 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Burney coloured her narrative. Much as they 
may have admired Cecilia the words as reported 
seem a Httle too highly charged for such well-bred 
and serious ladies. For Cecilia, Fanny Burney 
received ;^2 5o. 

Fanny Burney's introduction to Mrs Delany 
had an important bearing on her future. When 
staying at Mrs Delany's house at Windsor she was 
presented to the King and Queen, and afterwards 
she was offered the post of Queen's Bed Chamber 
Woman. 

Up to this moment we have felt ourselves in 
company with the author of Evelina— the woman 
of quick observation — the writer of lively dialogue. | 
We might have fancied that as her future life was 
to yield an unusual measure of variety and romance, 
her sympathies would have widened, her experi- 
ence broadened. But this is not the case. She 
has the power of superficially sketching a person 
or a scene in a few vivid words, but no instinctive 
sense of the depth or the tragedy of human exist- 
ence. Evelina remains the highwater mark of her 
achievement, and even the high spirits that made 
the charm of her earlier writings desert her under 
the irksomeness of her position at Court. 

But consider for a moment the elements of 
contrast in her life! Her brilliant entry into 
intellectual society and loyal acclaim by the giants 
of the day ; her sudden eclipse for five years in the 
tedious fatigues of a Court, having to submit to the 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 233 

unceasing tyranny of a coadjutor, narrow, jealous, 
and violent, fretted by unimportant minutiae of 
etiquette, and yet having opportunity of observing 
at first hand the madness of the King and important 
affairs of state ; her resignation and intimate con- 
verse with the French emigrant aristocrats living 
at Juniper Hall in Surrey ; her romantic marriage 
at Mickleham Church with Monsieur d'Arblay, a 
penniless nobleman who had lost his fortune in 
the Revolution ; the simple life that she led with 
him for eight years in Surrey, her pension from the 
Queen of ^loo a year being until the publication 
of Camilla practically their entire support ; her 
residence of ten years in France, where her 
husband regained some ^65 a year out of his 
fortune, but felt himself obliged to take a small 
post in the Civil Department of the Ministere 
de rinterieur; the accession of Louis XVIII. to 
the throne, and her husband's command as General 
under him during the Hundred Days ; her own 
residence in Brussels at the time of the Battle of 
Waterloo ; here indeed is overflowing material for 
romance ! An account of matters of such moment 
could not fail to be interesting, but her later 
diaries lack the liveliness of her earlier writings, 
and have gained no compensating depth of thought 
or sense of character. Her egoism, natural, ex- 
cusable, even charming in a girl, continues in 
after life the nucleus round which everything 
moves. And it is not the egoism of a strong 



234 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

personality. Continuous reading of the Diary 
makes us feel as if we were wading in shallows. 
Sparkling shallows often, with much play of 
surface light ; limpid shallows, revealing a char- 
acter most affectionate and kindly ; but shallows 
still, far removed from the deeper currents and 
the great waters. Horace Walpole, writing on 
Camilla in 1796, says: '* Alas ! she has reversed 
experience, which I have long thought reverses 
its own utility by coming at the wrong end of 
our life when we do not want it. This author 
knew the world and penetrated characters before 
she had stepped over the threshold ; and now 
she has seen so much of it, she has little or no 
insight at all : perhaps she apprehended having 
seen too much, and kept the bags of foul air 
that she brought from the Caves of Tempests 
too closely tied." 

The five years that Fanny Burney spent at 
Court were years of misery. Her salary was 
;^200 a year with rooms and a man-servant. She 
who had been flattered, courted, lauded to the 
skies, found herself shut away in narrow confine- 
ment from all that life held dear, from her family, 
from her friends, '' royally gagged, and promoted 
to fold muslins," as Horace Walpole put it, her 
constant companion a coarse, harsh woman, Mrs 
Schwellenberg, whose temper, naturally irascible, 
became at times furious even to savageness. This 
woman stands out distinct among the somewhat 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 235 

shadowy figures of the Court, with her broken 
English, her pet frogs, and her unfeehng cruelty, 
by which Miss Burney's predecessor in office 
nearly became blind from inflammation of the eyes 
through having to drive in the coach in all weathers 
with the windows down. Mrs Schwellenberg 
created such terror that no one dared resist her, 
and the equerries at first hardly ventured to speak 
to Miss Burney because of this woman's jealousy. 
But apart from the tyranny, Miss Burney does not 
appear to have been suited for a position at Court. 
She was over-anxious about the minutiae of 
etiquette, and she suffered cruelly when she 
believed that slights were put upon her. Mrs 
Thrale had written long before : "I live with her 
in a degree of pain that precludes friendship — dare 
not ask her to buy me a ribbon — dare not desire 
her to touch the bell lest she should think herself 
injured." To be summoned to the Queen by 
means of a bell was hurtful to Miss Burney's 
dignity ; her short-sightedness made her addition- 
ally nervous ; she was so pernickety about her dress 
that she seems constantly to have had to run into 
the presence with her toilette incomplete. When 
the Court visited Nunehead near Oxford the neglect 
she met with caused her agonies of shame. . . . 
*' To arrive at a house where no mistress or master 
of it cared about receiving me ; to wander about, 
a guest uninvited, a visitor unthought of. . . ." 
Her duties were not heavy, but they were fairly 



236 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

continuous. Her first summons to the Queen was 
about seven- thirty a.m., and after prayers she 
returned to breakfast in her own room. She spent 
till nearly a quarter to twelve making preparations 
for the day, and then was summoned to help the 
Queen in her afternoon toilette. From three to 
five was her only '' quite sure and undisturbed 
time." At five she dined with Mrs Schwellenberg ; 
at eight gave tea to the Equerry in Waiting, and 
any friend invited by the King and Queen. She 
spent the rest of the evening with Mrs Schwellen- 
berg till supper at eleven — and between eleven 
and twelve her last summons to the Queen took 
place. Queen Charlotte remains a vague figure 
in the Diary, though reported by Fanny as all 
sweetness, encouragement and gracious goodness. 
The King stands out much more clearly — amiable, 
quaint, considerate, unconventional in opinion : and 
Fanny Burney manages to rise to the great 
opportunity of his illness. Her description indeed 
is a contribution to history — full, too, of curious 
little personal touches : when the Court removes 
to Kew, for instance, she tells us how the Prince of 
Wales chalks up the names on the doors, assigning 
apartments. She had a dramatic encounter with 
the King in Kew Gardens before he had recovered 
from his madness. Coming upon him unex- 
pectedly walking with two doctors she ran away 
in terror, and was pursued by him. The Doctors 
bade her stop, and she forced herself to turn, and 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 237 

met the King, who retained all his wonted 
benignity of countenance, though there was some- 
thing still of wildness in his eyes. To her surprise 
he stooped and kissed her, and then proceeded to 
talk with that volubility which was a mark of the 
disease. Once he is said to have talked without 
ceasinof sixteen hours at a stretch. On this 
occasion he touched upon a myriad topics, 
— Handel — Mrs Delany — Mrs Schwellenberg — 
Dr Burney — showing a warm personal interest 
in Fanny, and a surprising understanding of the 
difficulties of her position. 

After five years, giving as excuse her failing 
health, she resigned her appointment at Court. 

And now our path leads to a little tract of country 
at the foot of Box Hill and among the hills in its 
vicinity. To our generation this tract has a peculiar 
and poignant association. Can there be in all the 
world a landscape so full of mystery and of magic 
as this which has inspired George Meredith's 
Woods of Westeinnain ? The woods hold such a 
virgin freshness, such a dazzling intensity, that in 
them we seem to touch the very springs of life. 
The leap and flash of detail is so sharp and pure, 
that it serves not to distract, but to minister to 
the ecstasy of the mystic, who in a trance of 
sympathy reads to the very heart and soul of 
nature : — 

" Look with spirit past the sense 
Spirit shines in permanence," 



238 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

But nightmare horrors lurk In these woods for 
the scoffer, the doubter, the egoist, and he who 
hates the shadow of a grain. So this our greatest 
poem of initiation into the mysteries of nature 
begins and ends with a warning : — 

" Enter these enchanted woods 
You who dare." 

Yet these woods of revelation, that quiver with 
spiritual rapture and terror, and whose beauty 
to-day seems of faery, formed in the Eighteenth 
Century no more than a picturesque stage for a 
series of little comedies and dramas, with tragedy 
lurking in the wings. Indeed as we follow the French 
emigrant nobles, gay, light-hearted amid their dire 
reverses, passing from Juniper Hall to Norbury, 
the trees seem to shape to an old convention that 
they may form a correct background for a life still 
dignified, still graceful, though it has been rudely 
interrupted by scenes of violence and of blood. 
The Surrey woods turn to a Watteau landscape 
with the hush and suspense of his invariable sug- 
gestion of brooding storm. 

The Emigres, like the vanquished Cavaliers, 
are figures of such pathetic picturesqueness that 
Romance claims them for her own, sweeping lightly 
aside the protests of Reason and of Justice. The 
hair-breadth escapes of these delicately-nurtured 
aristocrats, the shifts and hardships of their lot, the 
unfailing courage with which they met the shocks 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 239 

of ill-fortune and the resourceful gaiety with which 
they turned their hands and brains to the task of 
getting a living — these are qualities that appeal 
quickly to the imagination, and when described by 
the glowing pen of a Chateaubriand make reading 
of the most fascinating adventure. 

On the valley road that winds between Mickle- 
ham and Burford Bridge stands Juniper Hall, the 
home for some time of a little colony of Emigres. 
On one side of the valley rises the range of Box 
Hill, and on the other, the slopes on the summit 
of which is Norbury Park. This is the scene of 
the third act of Fanny Burney's life. 

She was now forty, broken in health, and we 
fancy a little disillusioned. Her affections had re- 
mained unengaged in early youth, when she had had 
certain proposals of marriage which she put lightly 
aside ; but after the triumph of Evelina there were 
at least two affairs of the heart which moved her 
profoundly, and which ended in disappointment. 
She came to her friends, the Locks of Norbury 
Park, a little faded, a little tired, feeling perhaps 
that the flower of life was over, that its interest 
and fragrance lay all in the past, and that the 
future had nothing to offer except withered leaves. 
But to the little French colony she was still "la 
premiere femme en Angleterre," as Madame de 
Stael calls her — Madame de Stael, who was now 
in England and presided over the Emigres at 
Juniper Hall. 



240 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Fanny was fascinated by Madame de Stael, 
as in former years she had been fascinated by 
Madame de Genlis. These famous Frenchwomen 
possessed, besides great brilHance of intellect, 
great personal charm, and in both cases the friend- 
ship ripened quickly. The extreme propriety of 
the Bas Bleu ladies is exemplified by the fact that 
at the first breath of rumour touching the reputation 
of the French women, Fanny Burney felt herself 
compelled to cease all intercourse. But before the 
break with Madame de Stael a stronger attachment 
came into Fanny Burney's life. 

Mrs Phillips, Fanny Burney's married sister, had 
a cottage at Mickleham, and as the emigrants were 
very shortly on intimate terms with the society of 
the neighbourhood, Mrs Phillips was able to give 
Fanny detailed and vivid accounts of the French 
Colony before she came among them. From Mrs 
Phillips' pen we have received our clearest picture 
of Monsieur d'Arblay. '* He seems to me a true 
militaire^' she writes, ''franc et loyal — open as the 
day — warmly affectionate to his friends — intelligent 
— ready and amusing in conversation, with a great 
share of gaietd de ccetcr, and, at the same time, of 
naivete and bonne foi." His portrait shows him 
handsome, aristocratic, debonnalr. He was the 
officer on guard at the Tuillerles the night on 
which the Royal Family escaped to Varennes. 
He was about forty at this time, and had lost his 
whole estates in the Revolution. 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 241 

Fanny's acquaintance with Monsieur d'Arblay 
soon grew into warm friendship. He undertook 
to teach her French, and she wrote : *' He is 
passionately fond of Hterature, a most deHcate 
critic in his own language, well versed in both 
Italian and German, and a very elegant poet." 
The romantic attachment ended in an offer of 
marriage, which was evidently looked on with 
misgiving by her father, since Monsieur dArblay, 
despite his birth and character, could only be 
regarded as a soldier of fortune under great 
disadvantages. Finally Dr Burney reluctantly 
gave way, and the marriage took place in 
Mickleham Church in 1793. 

The dArblays' only certain means of support 
was Fanny's pension from the Queen of ^100 
a year. The marriage was undoubtedly one of 
extraordinary courage on both sides, and the 
cheerfulness and good sense with which these 
two so diverse characters adapted themselves to 
their cramped circumstances shows them in a very 
attractive light. They rented a little cottage at 
Bookham in Surrey, and lived a life "tranquil, 
undisturbed and undisturbing." Madame d'Arblay 
writes : " Can life. Monsieur d'Arblay often says, 
be more innocent than ours, or happiness more 
inoffensive? He works in his garden or studies 
English and mathematics while I write. When 
I work at my needle, he reads to me ; and we 
enjoy the beautiful country around us in long and 
16 



242 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

romantic strolls." It is a delightful picture, and 
indeed Madame d'Arblay herself seems to have 
caught something of that exquisite grace which 
marks the letters written by the emigrants to 
Monsieur d'Arblay on his marriage. Certainly 
the most charming letter that she ever penned, as 
it is the most generous, was written to her 
husband's great friend, the Comte de Narbonne, 
who was then in serious difficulties. It was 
written after the birth of her son in 1794. 

*' Will you take a little cell under our rustic 
roof and fare as we fare ? What to us hermits 
is cheerful and happy will to you, indeed, be 
miserable ; but it will be some solace to the good- 
ness of your heart to witness our contentment ; 
to dig with M. dA. in the garden will be of 
service to your health ; to nurse sometimes with 
me in the parlour will be a relaxation to your mind. 
You will not blush to own your little godson." 

Camilla, Madame d'Arblay's third novel, was 
published by subscription in 1796. Among the 
list of subscribers we find the names of Jane 
Austen and Maria Edgeworth, Fanny Burney's 
lineal literary descendants. Dr Burney told 
Horace Walpole that Camilla had realised 
;^2000 ; but Austin Dobson asserts that the 
authoress only received ;if2 5o for it. Be that as 
it may, with the proceeds of the book the 
dArblays built Camilla Cottage near Box Hill on 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 243 

a plot of land rented from Mr Lock of Norbury 
Park. They moved into their new dwelling in 
1796. The cottage has been considerably added 
to and altered, but enough remains of the interior 
of the original unpretentious structure to enable 
us to reconstruct without difficulty the simple 
home life led by the d'Arblays with their beloved 
child, especially as the neighbourhood itself con- 
tinues practically unchanged. 

On her departure for France, where she resided 
for ten years, Madame dArblay passes out of 
English literary life. It is true that she published 
another novel, The Wanderer, which brought her 
the amazing sum of ;^7000, but as literature the 
book does not count. 

Reference has already been made to the brave 
fight made by her husband in Paris against adverse 
circumstances, and to his elevation to the rank 
of General on the accession of Louis XVI IL 
During the Hundred Days the d'Arblays ex- 
perienced many adventures. Madame dArblay 
fled to Brussels, encountering Chateaubriand on 
the way ; General dArblay was wounded at 
Treves by the kick of a horse, and Madame 
dArblay had a journey of exciting danger in order 
to join him. In 1815 they returned to England, 
taking up their residence at Bath. Here they had 
to live with the strictest economy, in order to 
support their son genteelly at the University. In 
18 1 8 General dArblay died. Madame dArblay 



244 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

then went to live at 1 1 Bolton Street, Piccadilly. 
It was here that Rogers, in 1826, and again in 1828, 
brought Sir Walter Scott to see her. Scott speaks 
of her in his journal as having "no remains of 
personal beauty," but '* a gentle manner and a 
pleasing expression of countenance." 

At the age of eighty Madame dArblay 
published her Memoirs of Dr Bztrney, claiming 
to be based on her father's manuscript as well 
as on her own diaries. Though no excuse 
can be offered for the brutality of its reviewers, 
yet the book affords justifiable ground for 
resentment. To begin with, Madame dArblay 
made an unforgivable holocaust of untold quanti- 
ties of letters and manuscripts belonging to her 
father, that she might produce a work which 
is in effect little more than a feeble imitation 
of her own diaries. Then with all her tortuous 
euphuism, with all her aggressive parade to 
avoid naming herself, she, "the Memorialist," 
"the Bookhamite Recluse," is the all-important 
character of the memoirs. They are written in 
an extraordinarily convoluted style — involved is 
too mild an expression — and written so long 
after the events that the same reliance cannot 
be placed upon them as upon the diaries. The 
first Blue-Stocking to shiver at the charge of 
Pedantry has left behind her one of the most 
pedantic books in the language. 

Madame dArblay's son, described as clever, 



FANNY BURNEY (MME. D'ARBLAY) 245 

indolent and eccentric, a Fellow of Christ's 
College, Cambridge, took orders in 1819, and in 
1836 became minister of Ely Chapel, Holborn. 
In 1837 he died of influenza, and in 1840 
Madame d'Arblay herself died. 

Madame dArblay's life links in a surprising 
manner the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth 
Centuries. To have been the pet of Dr Johnson 
and the admirer of Disraeli's Contarini Fleming; 
to have known intimately Mrs Delany, the friend 
of Swift, and to have met Sir Walter Scott ; to 
have been the author of Evelina, and to have lived 
into the reign of Queen Victoria ; such thoughts 
make us realise how arbitrary is time, and how 
near we are in actual fact, as well as in sentiment, 
to the Eighteenth Century. 



BLUE-STOCKING COTERIES 

THE Blue-Stockings gave other forms of 
entertainment as well as receptions : 
breakfast parties, dinner parties. The some- 
what ethereal fare on which conversation is 
sustained in the Bas Bleu — biscuits, tea, lemon- 
ade and orgeat — must not be supposed to 
indicate the delicate appetite of the age, nor 
to register the full weight of Blue-Stocking 
hospitality. By the evening, indeed, the heavy 
meals of the day were over ; and the fact that 
no lavish preparations were expected from 
hostesses promoted the frequency and the 
pleasantness of these evening assemblies. Mrs 
Delany, for instance, entertains Handel and some 
dozen of her friends. *' Mr Handel was in the 
best humour in the world . . . and accompanied 
Strada and all the ladies that sung, from seven 
o'clock until eleven. I gave them tea and coffee, 
and about half an hour after nine had a salver 
brought in of chocolate, mulled white wine and 
biscuits." 

But in addition to these simple forms of 
hospitality, certain of the Blue-Stocking hostesses 
were able to indulge, as we have already seen, 
246 



BLUE-STOCKING COTERIES 247 

in profuse and splendid entertainment, appropriate 
to a period which had so strong a relish for material 
things. 

The Eighteenth Century is famous for its solid 
eating and hard drinking. We read with astonish^ 
ment of the physical endurance that could face 
dinners eight hours long with constantly re- 
plenished glasses. These were the days of the 
six-bottle men. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's 
physician was amazed, she tells us, that she could 
manage to subsist on the following fare : — 

" I wake generally about seven, and drink half 
a pint of warm asses' milk, after which I sleep 
two hours ; as soon as I am risen, I constantly 
take three cups of milk coffee, and two hours 
after that a large cup of milk chocolate : two 
hours more brings my dinner, where I never fail 
swallowing a good dish (I mean plate) of gravy 
soup, with all the bread, roots, etc., belonging to 
it. I then eat a wing and the whole body of 
a large fat capon, and a veal sweetbread, con- 
cluding with a competent quantity of custard 
and some roasted chestnuts. At five in the 
afternoon I take another dose of asses' milk ; 
and for supper twelve chestnuts (which would 
weigh twenty-four of those in London), one 
new-laid egg, and a handsome porringer of white 
bread and milk. With this diet, notwithstand- 
ing the menaces of my wise doctor, I am now 



248 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

convinced that I am no longer in danger of 
starving. . . ." 

One recalls, too, the fare provided by Lady- 
Smart in Dean Swift's Polite Conversations. 
Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and Colonel 
Alwit come to breakfast with my Lady Smart at 
eleven ; Lord Smart returns to dinner at three ; 
and eight persons sit down to table. Here is 
the Bill of Fare : — 

First Course. — Sirloin of beef, fish, shoulder 
of veal and tongue, claret. 

Second Course. — Almond - pudding fritters, 
chickens, black puddings and soup. Wine and 
small beer. 

Third Course. — Hot venison pasty ; a hare, 
a rabbit, some pigeons, partridges, a goose and 
a ham. Beer and wine. 

A tankard of October was passed from mouth 
to mouth. The men drank Burgundy when the 
ladies withdrew to tea. After an hour the gentle- 
men joined the ladies, and played quadrille till 
three in the morning. 

The whole day would seem in some circles 
to have been consumed in eating and drinking. 
There were however approximate hours for 
meals, varying more than they do to-day. The 
midday dinner was still in general use. Mrs 
Montagu, when staying with the Duchess of 
Portland at Bulstrode, writes: "We breakfast at 



BLUESTOCKING COTERIES 249 

nine, dine at two, drink tea at eight, sup at ten." 
Mrs Delany gives as the hours for eating in 
Ireland, ten, three, and ten again. In great 
houses, according to Hannah More (1788), the 
hour for dinner was six. Fanny Burney, when 
at Windsor in the Queen's service, dined at five, 
took tea at eight, supper at eleven. Horace 
Walpole dined at four. 

This custom of dining late gave scope to fancy 
and freedom in the matter of lunch. When the 
King and Queen visited the Duke and Duchess 
of Portland at twelve noon, Mrs Delany tells 
us of the refreshment that was provided for them. 
"The Duchess of Portland brought Her Majesty 
a dish of tea, rolls and cakes, which she accepted, 
but would carry it back herself when she had 
drank the tea, into the Gallery where everything 
proper for the time of day was prepared, tea, 
chocolate, etc., bread-and-butter rolls, cakes, and 
— on another table — all sorts of fruit and ice. 
When the tea was done with, a cold collation 
took its place." But luncheon parties in our 
modern sense were not given at the time. 

The breakfast party, however, was a very 
popular form of entertainment, which Mrs Montagu 
in particular seems to have favoured. The most 
enthusiastic account of one of these breakfasts 
is from the graceful pen of Madame du Bocage, 
who herself held a famous Salon in Paris. The 
account appears in her Letters on England, Ho Handy 



250 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

and Italy. Mrs Montagu (Lady Montagu, as 
Madame du Bocage calls her) was then living 
at Hill Street, and the breakfast was given in 
the Chinese Room. '* We breakfasted . . . to-day- 
April 8th, 1750, at Lady Montagu's in a closet 
lined with painted paper of Pekin and furnished 
with the choicest movables of China, A long 
table, covered with the finest linen, presented to 
the view a thousand glittering cups and dishes, 
which contained coffee, chocolate, biscuits, cream, 
butter, toasts, and exquisite tea. You must 
understand that there is no good tea to be had 
anywhere but in London. The mistress of the 
house, who deserves to be served at the table 
of the gods, poured it out herself. This is the 
custom, and in order to conform to it the English 
ladies wear a white apron and a pretty straw 
hat, which suits their height admirably, and 
becomes them well, not only in their own apart- 
ments, but at noon, in St James's Park, where 
they walk with the stately and majestic gait of 
nymphs." 

Forty-one years later Mrs Montagu is still 
giving breakfast parties — this time at the great 
house at Portman Square. She breakfasted seven 
hundred persons in 1791, says Horace Walpole. 
Of another breakfast party Fanny Burney writes : 
**The crowd of company was such that we could 
only slowly make way in any part. . . . There 
could not be fewer than four or five hundred 



BLUE-STOCKING COTERIES 251 

)eople. It was like a full Ranelagh by day- 
light. . . . Dr Russel, who was in high spirits . . . 
laughed heartily at seeing the prodigious meal 
most of the company made of cold chicken, ham, 
fish, etc." 

It is obvious that in assemblies so frequented, 
and so inevitably miscellaneous, conversation in 
its best sense was impossible. We fancy that 
conversation did not flourish so well even at 
the receptions specially established for its cultiva- 
tion, as at those intimate dinner-tables composed 
of chosen guests. Mrs Thrale's dinner parties, 
of which some account has been given, were 
perhaps rather large and formal. We would '^ 
sooner have been present at some of the smaller 
dinners, generally composed of eight picked guests, 
such as Mrs Garrick's party described by Boswell, 
the first she gave after the death of Garrick. ** The 
company was. Miss Hannah More, who lived with 
her, and whom she called her chaplain ; Mrs Bos- 
cawen, Mrs Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
Dr Burney, Dr Johnson, and myself. We found 
ourselves very elegantly entertained. . . . We 
were all in fine spirits ; and I whispered to Mrs 
Boscawen, ' I believe this is as much as can be 
made of life.' In addition to a splendid enter- 
tainment, we were regaled with Lichfield Ale, 
which had a peculiar appropriate value." (Garrick, 
of course, was a native of Lichfield, as well as Dr 
Johnson.) 



252 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

** I believe this Is as much as can be made of 
life." Here we have the highest diploma that 
has ever been granted to social entertainment. 

Most interesting to us of this age is the account 
by Hannah More of a '* very pleasant comical 
dinner" given by Mrs Cholmondeley. "We were 
only nine females ; everything was very elegant ; 
but we were as merry as if there had been no 
magnificence ; and we all agreed that men were 
by no means so necessary as we had all been 
foolish enough to fancy." This was indeed a 
daring innovation — an assertion of resource and 
individuality quite startling — the faint foreshadow- 
ing of a future age when independence should 
become the step to interdependence. 

Among her intimates Mrs Montagu also in- 
troduced an original practice. She did not 
anticipate, like Mrs Cholmondeley, but reverted 
to a far past, and introduced into an atmosphere 
of Eighteenth Century propriety a ceremony primi- 
tive, picturesque, belonging to an ancient heroism, 
the '* Feast of Shells," which she celebrated by 
drinking with her friends out of a nautilus to the 
immortal memory of Osslan. 

Somewhere surely in the ante-chambers of Mrs 
Montagu's being was an unexplored sympathy for 
the strange and the wild. Shakespeare's romance 
leaves her unmoved, but his Witches on the heath 
thrill her. The century suppressed this side of 
her nature as it caused Mrs Chapone insensibly 



BLUE-STOCKING COTERIES 253 

to trim her conclusions on the inequality of the 
sexes. We recognise the " Feast of Shells" to be 
a transient impulse ; the breakfast parties, the re- 
ceptions, the Thd which so excited Hannah More s 
scorn, show Mrs Montagu in a more characteristic 
light. ''You are to invite fifty or a hundred 
people to come at eight o'clock," writes Hannah 
More, *' there is to be a long table, or little parties 
at small ones . . . tea and coffee are made by the 
company, as at a public breakfast ; the table is 
covered with rolls, wafers, bread-and-butter ; and 
what constitutes the very essence of a Thd, an 
immense load of hot buttered rolls, and muffins, 
all admirably contrived to create a nausea in 
persons fresh from the dinner-table . . . the Duke 
of Dorset in Paris, where people dine at two, 
thought this would be a pretty fashion to intro- 
duce ; we who dine at six must adopt this French 
translation of an English fashion." She adds : 
** Of all nations under the sun, I take it, the 
English are the greatest fools." 

Buttered toast appears to have been ''an insular 
institution" at this time. 

The exceeding popularity of tea, and the vast 
quantity that was drunk, come somewhat as a 
surprise. It seems from the accounts given above 
to have been welcome at all hours of the day ; 
the pages of Boswell are tinted with tea ; and we 
all remember that story told by Northcote, how 
the Dowager Lady Macleod, having poured Dr 



254 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Johnson out sixteen cups of tea, asked him if a 
small basin would not save him trouble and be 
more agreeable? Dr Johnson, in fact, takes upon 
himself to defend tea in most sober print in the 
Literary Magazine. He writes of himself as a 
*' hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has 
for twenty years diluted his meals with only the 
infusion of this fascinating plant, whose kettle has 
scarcely time to cool, who with Tea amuses the 
evening, with Tea solaces the midnight, and with 
Tea welcomes the morning." 

Splendid breakfast parties, formal or intimate 
dinner parties, receptions, simple or magnificent ; 
all these are included in the radius of Blue-Stocking 
entertainment. We should, however, be doing 
grave injustice to the Blue-Stocking movement if 
we were to imply that Mrs Montagu, Mrs Vesey, 
Mrs Thrale (and Mrs Boscawen) were its only 
hostesses. These have merely been selected as 
typical, and because selection is inevitable. But 
allusion has already been made in passing to 
other well-known leaders of the Blue-Stocking 
coteries — to Mrs Ord, at whose party Fanny 
Burney was introduced to Soame Jenyns, and to 
whom Wraxall assigns a third of that '' triple 
crown " of leadership in place of Mrs Boscawen, 
Hannah More's choice for investiture. It was 
at Mrs Ord's house that Hannah More found 
** every delectable in the blue way." We have also 
mentioned Miss Monckton (afterwards Countess 



BLUE-STOCKING COTERIES 255 

of Cork), who had the finest '* bit of blue " at 
the house of her mother, Lady Gal way. Miss 
Monckton was the lady to whom, when she 
asserted that she had found some of Sterne's 
writings pathetic, Dr Johnson made his memor- 
able reply : " That is, because, dearest, you are 
a dunce." She lived to 1840, entertaining to 
the end, and has been called the* Mast of the 
Blue-Stockings." Then there was Mrs Chol- 
mondeley, an active disintegrator of the Circle, 
as well as a giver of ''female" dinner parties. 
Mrs (afterwards Lady) Crewe has been quoted 
as one authority for the origin of the term Blue- 
Stocking. This lady was the daughter of Dr 
Burney's early patron Fulke Greville, and to her 
Sheridan dedicated the School for Scandal, He 
pays her in the dedication this somewhat doubtful 
compliment : — 

" What e'er she says, though sense appears throughout. 
Displays the tender hue of female doubt ; 
Deck'd with that charm, how lovely wit appears. 
How graceful science^ when that robe she wears ! " 

Lady Lucan, as well as Lady Crewe, we have 
met with in the verses to the Herald. Lady 
Lucan's were the parties so blue, they were quite 
''mazarin blue." Mrs Walsingham and Lady 
Herries are also named as prominent hostesses 
by Lady Louisa Stuart. Hannah More writes of 
Walsingham s ''various power to cheer the lonely, 
grace the letter'd hour." 



256 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

There are many other names in the memoirs, 
and names no doubt forgotten by the memoirs. 
As we reflect over all these leaders of Society, we 
see the Blue-Stocking movement spread in ever- 
widening circles. London no longer contains it — 
it has reached Streatham Place and Strawberry 
Hill and Hampstead — it touches in its expansion 
many of the great country houses. House parties 
in the country are indeed the form of entertainment 
best suited to the genius of the English people, 
with the opportunities they afford for sport and 
for games ; and they have been popular from the 
time of Sir William Temple down to the present 
day. But conversation has usually been only a 
subsidiary attraction ; the Blue-Stockings gave 
it the first place at their country seats. The 
movement extended as far north as Crewe Hall, 
Lady Crewe's house, and as far west as Batheaston, 
near Bath, where the doings of Mrs (afterwards 
Lady) Miller excited the interest and the ridicule 
of her contemporaries. 

For this lady introduced into her entertainments 
an element new to England. Wit and quickness 
of parts were to be employed, not merely in con- 
versation, but in the making of verses. This had 
long been a feature in certain Salons in France, 
both in the Seventeenth and in the Eighteenth 
Centuries. The daughter of Madame Geoffrin, 
Madame de la Ferte - Imbault, established a 
famous " Order " of Lampooning Knights and 



BLUESTOCKING COTERIES 257 

Fooling Ladies, the members of which contributed 
to the entertainment a song, an epigram, an 
anecdote, or some quip in verse or prose. The 
hostess was the Queen of the order which had 
its appointed officers. The EngHsh imitation of 
this Institution at Batheaston required quite an 
elaborate apparatus. There was a large antique 
vase said to have been found in Cicero's villa. In 
this vase, which stood in a low window overlooking 
the Avon, the guests deposited their verses. This 
vase is now in Victoria Park. There were myrtle 
wreaths to crown the brows of the victors, namely, 
the three writers of the best verses as adjudged 
by a Committee. Lady Miller, robed as a pagan 
priestess, performed this ceremony. Her appearance 
was unfortunately not well suited to the part, for 
Fanny Burney describes her as "a round, plump, 
coarse-looking dame of about forty. . . ." Four 
volumes of the contributions were published under 
the title of Poetical Amusements at a Villa near 
Bath, 

These doings were regarded as frivolous by the 

more sober, and as absurd by the more cynical 

members of the community. Dr Johnson wondered 

how people could be persuaded to write for the 

lady. " I named a gentleman of his acquaintance," 

Bos well relates, '' who wrote for the vase." 

Johnson : ''He was a blockhead for his pains." 

Boswell'. "The Duchess of Northumberland wrote." 

Johnson : '* Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland 

17 



J 



258 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

may do what she pleases ; nobody will say anything 
to a lady of her rank." ''Bout rimes'' he said on 
another occasion, '' is a mere conceit, and an old 
conceit now^ Horace Walpole's account of the 
*' puppet show Parnassus at Batheaston " is racy. 
"Alas," he says, "Mrs Miller is returned (from 
abroad) a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth 
muse. . . . They hold a Parnassus fair every 
Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all 
the flux and quality of Bath contend for the prizes. 
. . . There never was anything so entertaining or 
so dull. . . ." 

But despite the ridicule of Walpole and the 
scorn of Johnson, many poets of note in their day 
condescended to contribute to the Vase : and 
Miss Anna Seward, to use her own words, owed 
to Lady Miller's kind bidding the first public 
recognition of the pipings of her own artless reed. 
Which, being interpreted, is to say that she 
submitted to the Batheaston arbiters two of her 
best poems — the " Monody on Andre," and the 
" Elegy on Captain Cook." 

Miss Seward was only a casual visitor at Bath : 
her kingdom was Lichfield, where she reigned as 
intellectual Queen and where she was affec- 
tionately and admiringly designated under the 
symbol of the Swan. The Swan was daughter 
to a canon of the Cathedral, and lived for 
nearly half a century at the Palace, entertaining 
widely. 



BLUE-STOCKING COTERIES 259 

For the blue fire was not merely carried by 
hostesses from London to make a blaze at their 
country seats, as in the case of Lady Crewe of 
Crewe Hall : neither was it solely fanned by 
Londoners in quest of health and pleasure such 
as frequented Lady's Miller's receptions at Bath- 
easton. One of the most remarkable features of 
the Blue-Stocking movement was its spontaneous 
outburst in provincial centres. The end of the 
Eighteenth Century offers a practically unique 
record of intellectual coteries in provincial towns — 
coteries not attracted by any dominant genius, 
not drawn together by any question of universal 
appeal, but consisting simply of little groups of culti- 
vated people with definite literary ideals, interested 
largely in each other's poetical efforts, and enjoy- 
ing to the full the social satisfaction induced by 
mutual admiration and an abundance of sentiment. 
Lichfield is one of these centres, and Norwich 
another. 

It might have been surmised that Lichfield, 
having produced two of the most prominent figures 
of the age — Samuel Johnson and David Garrick 
— would have exhausted its powers ; but after 
these two giants had left to exert their magnetism 
in London, the city still retained ample mental 
nourishment to support a coterie of talent, both 
native and transplanted. Looking back at 
Lichfield through the years, the figures that 
attract us most are those delightful experimenters, 



260 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Erasmus Darwin and Thomas Day. Dr Darwin's 
experiments were in Science and in Verse, blended 
in his extraordinary "Botanic Garden" — that 
**poem cast in metal," whose parts are as sharp 
and glittering as the instruments of the surgeon's 
profession, and whose machinery of elementals is 
as polished and mechanical as the most precise 
engineer could demand. Thomas Day, re- 
membered now as the author of " Sandford and 
Merton," made much more dangerous experiments 
than Darwin, for Life and Love were his subjects, 
and the record of those experiments has proved 
a perennial source of inspiration to the dramatist 
down to the present time. But to contemporary 
eyes Day and Darwin were but satellites about the 
Central Figure of Lichfield Society — the Swan. 

The distinguishing quality of the Lichfield 
coterie was sentiment, as the distinguishing quality 
of the Norwich coterie was seriousness. In 
Norwich the Quaker element remained dominant, 
and learning went hand in hand with philanthropy : 
even the gay and charming Mrs Opie fell under 
the spell of this atmosphere, and joined the Society 
of Friends. But sentiment, so universal in the 
Eighteenth Century, had its intimate home in 
Lichfield, and its essence in Miss Seward. Mr E. 
V. Lucas In his study of the Swan has brought 
out with subtle humour all the rich and delicate 
flavour of this Lichfield sentiment — all its stilted 
enthusiasms and prim flowerlness. Miss Seward 



BLUE-STOCKING COTERIES 261 

when she takes up her pen to write, poses invari- 
ably in the attitude of the Muse — a pose that 
becomes in the end almost unselfconscious. She 
is mirrored thus in her personal letters as well as 
in her once popular poems. It was her way — and 
indeed to some extent the way of her century — to 
set life's experiences about with fine words, and 
frame them in a decorative freize — to express 
extravagant admiration for the work of friends, 
and to " drop into poetry " on every available 
occasion. And life's experiences bulk larger on 
the little stage of Lichfield than in the vast circus 
of London. The history of the Lichfield coterie is 
one full of character and romance — we become 
quickly acquainted with the few personages, who 
are all intimate with one another. The Lichfield 
love-affairs alone are of absorbing interest, and 
Miss Seward, though she never married, was no 
stranger to the tender passion and had always 
torrential sympathy to offer to those who confided 
in her. She made Sir Walter Scott her literary 
executor, and in the generous performance of this 
office, time which might have been devoted to 
what the world would always have remembered, 
was given to what the world has already forgotten. 
In her day Miss Seward was accepted at her own 
valuation, and no one had the remotest perception 
that her pose might be regarded as humorous. 
The humour of the Batheaston celebration, how- 
ever, was obvious to many contemporaries. 



262 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

But the Blue-Stocking movement, many-sided as 
it is, would not be complete without this little 
irresponsible outburst of bunting, and the gay little 
villa at Batheaston has a tiny appointed place amid 
the solider and more imposing edifices of Blue- 
Stocking hospitality. 



ELIZABETH CARTER (17 17-1806) 



TIj^LIZABETH CARTER— the translator of 
-■— ' Epictetus. Those few words contain matter 
for infinite surprise. At first sight Epictetus would 
seem to have no appeal for the Eighteenth Century — 
an age of self-indulgence, an age of corruption in 
most departments of life — an age antagonistic to the 
implied asceticisms of the Greek Philosopher. How 
could the doctrines of Stoicism even interest a people 
so supremely satisfied with material things ? Then 
the translator was a lady in a century which 
considered Greek the most unladylike of all subjects 
for study — a modest, diffident girl, near-sighted, 
awkward in company, slow in learning though of 
patient determination. Yet in spite of these 
apparent obstacles to success, the book proved so 
good a selling-book that it helped its translator to 
independence for life ; and in spite of her unfeminine 
learning, Mrs Carter is one of the most loved and 
most lovable of the Blue-Stocking ladies. 

Elizabeth Carter probably possessed more learn- 
ing than any other lady of the Bas Bleu Coteries. 
Her father taught her Latin, Greek and Hebrew. 
She acquired a perfect knowledge of French from 

a Huguenot refugee minister ; Italian, Spanish and 

263 



264 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

German she taught herself, and she also studied 
Portuguese and Arabic. The country people 
round Deal where she lived regarded her as a kind 
of witch who could forecast the coming of storms 
and the periods of high tide. Her nephew and 
biographer tells how she once went to a puppet 
show at Deal, and Punch was uncommonly dull 
and serious, who was usually more jocose than 
delicate. " Why, Punch," says the showman, 
" what makes you so stupid ? " ''I can't talk my 
own talk," says Punch, "the famous Miss Carter is 
here." 

The process of learning was, however, 
exceedingly painful to the famous Miss Carter, and 
she employed devices which probably undermined 
her health and made her in later life a victim to 
constant headache. To keep herself awake at 
night she used to take snuff, bind a wet towel 
round her head, and chew green tea and coffee. 
In order to rise between four and five in the morning, 
she got the sexton to pull a thread in the garden 
which was attached to a bell at the head of her bed. 
Verses of hers signed " Eliza" began to appear in 
the Gentleman's Magazine when she was in her 
seventeenth year — 1734; she was born in 171 7. 
Before she was twenty-two she had published a 
small collection of poems and two translations — 
one from the French, an attack on Pope's 
Essay on Man and one from the Italian, Algarotti's 
** Newtonianismo per le Dame" — *'Sir Isaac 




ELIZABETH CARTER 

FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE, P.R.A., IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 265 

Newton's Philosophy explained, for the use 
of the Ladies, in six Dialogues, on Light and 
Colour." These works established her reputation. 
Dr Johnson, whose acquaintance she made through 
Cave, the Bookseller and Publisher, wrote in 1738 
to Cave as follows : ** I have composed a Greek 
epigram on Eliza, and think she ought to be 
celebrated in as many different languages as Lewis 
le Grand." Richardson, who saw her Ode to 
Wisdom in manuscript, inserted it in his Clarissa 
Harlowe, unaware at the time of the identity of the 
author. Her fame spread on the Continent : the 
scholar Baratier desired the honour of correspond- 
ence with her; and later, in 1759, an account of 
her accomplishments with a word '' portrait " of her 
appeared in Russia. Yet even during the period 
of excessive study, Elizabeth Carter delighted in 
the ordinary enjoyments of youth ; to quote the 
somewhat stilted language of her nephew and 
biographer : . . . " those who have long been 
accustomed to contemplate with respect, and even 
reverence, the deep scholar and pious moralist, will 
be surprised when they are told that Mrs Carter 
loved dancing, was somewhat, when very young, of 
a romp. ..." Indeed, at no period of her life did 
she exhibit the least symptom of pedantry. And if 
she was the most learned of the Blue-Stockings, 
she was also the most modest. " Carter taught 
the female train the truly wise are never vain," 
says Hannah More. Mrs Montagu wrote of her 



266 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

when first they met before their friendship had 
ripened : *' She is a modest, amiable, gentle 
creature, not herisee de grec nor blown up with 
self-opinion." Undue pride in learning was partly 
counteracted by the large claims which were made 
upon the domestic side of her nature, which kept 
her in touch with warm human interests. Her 
father, the Rev. Nicolas Carter, D.D., was 
perpetual curate at the Chapel erected at Deal, and 
for many years Elizabeth shared the charge of his 
children by a second marriage. She educated her 
half-brother, Henry, for the University. She was 
of necessity much occupied with household 
cares ; plain needlework engaged her attention ; — 
she wrote, for instance, to Archbishop Seeker in 
reply to his suggestion that she should write the 
Life of Epictetus, " Whoever that somebody or 
other is who is to write the Life of Epictetus, 
seeing I have a dozen shirts to make, I do opine 
that it cannot be I." Her cooking stands eulogised 
for all time in Dr Johnson's famous saying : '* My 
old friend, Mrs Carter, can make a pudding as well 
as translate Epictetus, and work a handkerchief as 
well as compose a poem." Her success in forming 
a special good sweet cake was such, that she was 
•' employed to make every Christening cake that 
happened in the family ever after." 

Though she always spent some part of the year 
in London, she fulfilled all social obligations 
towards her neighbours at Deal. " I am engaged 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 267 

this afternoon with I know not how many 
vociferous fat gentlewomen at penny quadrille," 
she writes. 

Another safeguard against pedantry is to be 
found in her extreme diffidence — " elle est modeste 
a I'exces," says the Russian account of her. She 
writes to her bosom friend, Miss Talbot, when 
there was some question of finding a place for 
her at Court, " Need I remind you of the very 
awkward and even ideot figure I make in company 
when I am under the least restraint ; and that I 
have no one popular art of conversation to remove 
in any degree the prejudice which must infallibly 
be raised from so foolish and unpromising an 
appearance." 

She acquired perfect ease of manner in later 
life, but at no expense of modesty ; her contem- 
poraries all unite in praising her unaffected 
simplicity, which was as noticeable at the literary 
coteries in London as at the penny quadrille 
parties in Deal. 

Lady Louisa Stuart says of Mrs Carter that she 
was wholly untainted with pedantry, or afiectation. 
" Upon her," she says, " the sound scholarship of a 
learned man sate, as it does upon a man, easily and 
quietly. . . . But the very humility and plain- 
ness of her character," Lady Louisa Stuart goes on, 
** made it avail nothing towards simplifying the 
general tone of her society, for she loved listening 
far better than talking ; and as she had no quick 



268 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

perception of other people's feelings and absurd- 
ities, much less any dispostion to oppose them, she 
sate still, honestly admiring what a livelier (though 
perhaps a shallower) person would have criticised 
or ridiculed." In fact, Lady Louisa assesses Mrs 
Montagu's worth by her friendship with Mrs 
Carter. 

Elizabeth Carter also possessed that strongest 
solvent of pride of intellect — a keen sense of 
humour. Wit is a quality of the head, and humour 
of the heart : wit is the more dazzling and humour 
the more kindly quality, and Mrs Carter had all 
the sanity that humour gives, the sense of pro- 
portion and the wide sympathy. She attracts us 
to-day, not by reason of her learning, but by 
reason of her depth of emotion, strenuous, helpful, 
imaginative even. Her poems, which won so much 
contemporary admiration, appear to us trivial and 
stilted ; but in her letters, her affections spur the 
mind to tender images and gentle fancies. Her 
sound common-sense is evidenced in the follow- 
ing piece of advice published among her 
Miscellanies : — 

'' Madam, 

*'. . . Are you young ? Why then be wise, and 
be a wonder. Are you old ? Be cheerfully 
prudent and decently agreeable ; as for your 
opinions, be consistent in all, and obstinate in none, 
and rejoice that you are got so far in safety through 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 269 

a dangerous world. Are you naturally gay ? 
Why then never go out of your way to seek for 
pleasure, and you will constantly enjoy it. Are 
you serious ? Remember that not to be happy is 
not to be grateful. Are you melancholy ? Beware 
of romance. Are you handsome ? Be unaffected 

and charm like Lady C . Are you plain ? 

Be easy and outshine all beauties. . . . Are you 
in a moderate station ? Be content, though not 
affectedly so; be philosophical, but not affectedly 
so ; see the world in its just light, but, for the most 
part, keep your thoughts to yourself. Are you 
sleepy? Go to bed." 

All Mrs Carter's relationships in life, with 
father, with step-mother, with half-brother, with 
friends, were marked by the charm of mutual 
understanding. Her father was a man of large 
views, giving sons and daughters alike the same 
education, and fostering in them that independ- 
ence of spirit which was so marked a characteristic 
of Elizabeth. We find this verse of hers in a poem 
addressed to her father : — 

" Ne'er did thy voice assume a master's pow'r 
Nor force assent to what thy precepts taught ; 
But bid my independent spirit soar, 

In all the freedom of unfetter'd thought." 

He trusted to her judgment at an early age 
matters which were usually dictated by parents 



270 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

without appeal. He wished her to marry, as he 
was unable to provide for her after his death, but 
he refused in any way to cross her inclination, and 
was willing in particular cases to leave the 
decision entirely in her hands. Elizabeth Carter 
never married ; but we need not thence conclude, 
as Mrs Montagu did, that she did not know what 
love was. Mrs Montagu wrote to Mrs Carter with 
reference to Cowley, " I agree with you that his 
love-verses are insufferable. I think, you and I 
who have never been in love, could describe it 
better were we ask'd, what is it like ? " 

This passage reveals the curiously prosaic turn 
of Mrs Montagu's character. It is a fact of 
extraordinary significance that Mrs Montagu — 
a woman — a wit — in her Essay on Shakespeare, 
makes no particular mention of Shakespeare's 
women characters, considered by modern com- 
mentators his greatest triumphs in creation. 
The vision of Shakespeare's glory belongs to 
a seer of this age, who, gazing upon a sea of 
storm, found Shakespeare's genius embodied in 
the whole world from the arching sky to the 
ageless hills and seas : — 

" And there the soul alive in ear and eye 
That watched the wonders of an hour pass by 
Saw brighter than all stars that heaven inspheres 
The silent splendour of Cordelia's tears, 
Felt in the whispers of the quickening wind 
The radiance of the laugh of Rosalind, 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 271 

And heard, in sounds that melt the souls of men 
With love of love, the tune of Imogen." 

How remote all this Is from the Eighteenth 
Century ! Mrs Montagu was as insensitive to the 
brilliant sallies and spiritual renunciations of Shake- 
speare's women as to their romantic passions. Mrs 
Carter, on the other hand, if she did not know 
what romantic love was, had perhaps a better 
conception of Its magic than her friend. "'Tis 
surely a fatal error," she writes, " to give oneself 
up to certain enchantments that lead the mind 
into faery regions of dreams and shadows, where 
It Is amused and fixed on Imaginary forms of 
happiness and perfection which vanish with the 
fickle cause that gave them being, and one Is 
left In the midst of a wild and perplexed solitude, 
astonished and utterly at a loss what road to 
take or where to meet with any object to divert It." 

Elizabeth Carter's Independence, encouraged 
by her father, was further stimulated by her love 
of the open air — a trait very unusual In that 
century. It was her habit, partly from Inclination 
and partly for the sake of health, to take long 
walks before breakfast, and she had full delight 
In the sense of new adventure and the glory of 
freshness that Is held by the early morning. Her 
letters contain many clear-cut Impressions of the 
country round Deal. Speaking of the companion of 
these rambles she writes : ** Many are the exercises 
of patience she meets with In our peregrination, 



272 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

sometimes half-roasted with the full glare of 
sunshine upon an open common, then dragged 
through a thread-paper path in the middle of 
a cornfield, and bathed up to the ears in dew, 
and at the end of it perhaps forced to scratch 
her way through the bushes of a close, shady- 
lane, never before frequented by any animal but 
birds. In short, towards the conclusion of our 
walk, we make such deplorable ragged figures, 
that I wonder some prudent country justice 
does not take us up as vagrants. ... an 
apprehension that does not half so much fright 
me, as when some civil swains pull off their hats, 
and I hear them signifying to one another, with 
a note of admiration, that / am Parson Carter s 
daughter^ Parson Carter's daughter was a good 
walker up to nearly the end of her life ; " without 
vanity I may pretend to be one of the best walkers 
of the age," she says. On tw^o occasions, at least, 
she walked from Canterbury to Deal — 16 or i7 
miles — when the coach put her down at the former 
town — a performance of no account in this 
athletic age, but which constituted a feat in the 
Eighteenth Century. A keen and discriminating 
zest for nature continued with her to the last. 
This is excellently shown in a brief extract from 
a letter to Mrs Montagu, dated 1761 : *'. . . This 
object I was so undone at your not seeing, was 
no other than a single honeysuckle. It grew in 
a shady lane, and was surrounded by the deepest 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 273 

verdure, while its own figure and colouring, which 
were quite perfect, were illuminated by a ray of 
sunshine. There are some common objects, some- 
times placed in such a situation, viewed in such 
a light, and attended by such accompaniments as 
to be seen but once in a whole life, and to give 
one a pleasure entirely new ; and this was one 
of them, and I firmly believe there was no such 
honeysuckle ever existing in the world before. ..." 
She speaks somewhere of her '' intemperate love 
of air," and she writes that she does not think of 
Mrs Montagu's house in Portman Square as a 
magnificent house, and a fine house, and an elegant 
house, though all this is very true, but as a house 
containing a great quantity of air. Mrs Carter's 
own house in Deal, to which she moved in 1762 
— though it was small — she describes it as a 
vinegar-bottle — was in so exposed a position 
that she says it was " too much like the 
Eddystone." Of her sitting-room she writes : '' It 
is in everything but motion an absolute cabin.'* 
From her window she would observe the sea every 
hour of the day, '* and every hour it wears some new 
appearance if it be only from the various colourings 
it receives from the shifting clouds. " This love of 
the open is the trait in Mrs Carter that brings her 
closest to the present age. 

And now to glance at the work that has carried 
her name down to us. Elizabeth Carter beean her 
translation of Epictetus in 1 749 as a mere exercise 
18 



274 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

in composition to do pleasure to her friends, Miss 
Talbot and Dr Seeker, Bishop of Oxford, after- 
wards Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bishop 
indeed translated at first one or two specimen 
sheets for her guidance, and advocated her use of 
a less polished style of English, that she might 
approximate more to the blunt and incisive periods 
of the Greek author. Without the encouragement 
of these friends it is doubtful whether she would 
have carried her task to its conclusion, for often 
she flagged and thought of giving it over. The 
question of publication only arose after the trans- 
lation was completed in 1756; the book itself was 
not published till 1758. There were one thousand 
and eighteen copies struck off at first, but as these 
were found insufficient for the subscribers — the 
subscription was a guinea a copy — two hundred 
and fifty more were printed ; and there were two 
other editions in Mrs Carter's life. 

And now we come to a curious point in Eighteenth 
Century ethics. Miss Talbot began to be troubled as 
to the wisdom of giving this translation to the world 
— as to the effect it might have on the minds of be- 
lievers. *' It is terrifying," she wrote, *' to think 
what effects a book so mixed up of excellence and 
error might have in this infidel age, if it be not 
sufficiently guarded with proper notes and animad- 
versions." Mrs Carter's common sense would not 
allow her at first to accept this suggestion. " No 
infidel," she replied, " I believe, will find any great 



i 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 275 

comfort In the study of Epictetus, unless he is 
perverse enough to take comfort in finding himself 
obliged to practise the morality of the gospel with- 
out its encouragements and supports." But Miss 
Talbot was so persistent, and the Bishop so fully 
shared her views, that at last Mrs Carter took 
fright, and we find her writing, *' It is surely a 
dangerous experiment to administer poison to try 
the force of an antidote." In the end, however, 
Miss Talbot's counsel prevailed, and an antidote 
was provided in the shape of notes. 

It was as an extraordinary feat of learning rather 
than as a gospel of a new code of ethics that the 
translation appealed to the Eighteenth Century. If 
Miss Talbot thought Stoicism a dangerous doctrine, 
Mrs Montagu thought it silly. " There is so much 
absurdity in the stoical doctrines, one cannot read 
their works with intense pleasure, but Epictetus is 
reckoned one of the best of them. ..." There 
was, perhaps, never an age when Epictetus as a. 
teacher would have been so little understood. And, 
indeed, the success of the translator was largely due 
to the interest of her contemporaries in a curiosity. 
But Elizabeth Carter herself had decidedly some 
measure of kinship with the philosopher. Her 
rigidity of principle, her absolute simplicity, her 
love of independence, her constant suffering, and 
even her sound common sense, found sympathetic 
echo in the doctrines of Epictetus. Of all the 
great philosophers, Epictetus is perhaps the most 



276 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

didactic, and this quality made strong appeal to 
her. In spite of her constant residence in London, 
and the fact that she mixed freely with the society 
of her day, she remained to the end a little pro- 
vincial, which is to say a little prejudiced, a little 
narrow. Fanny Burney, writing in 1781, says that 
of life and manners she is as ignorant as a nun. 
She could not read Chatterton's poems, because 
** his dissolute life and his melancholy end equally 
shocked her feelings and her principles," to quote the 
words of her nephew and biographer, who published 
her memoirs in 1 8 1 6. Her " aversion to the smallest 
relaxation in the moral principle " prevented her also 
from enjoying the poetry of Burns. This nephew, 
a worthy clergyman no doubt, but pompous and 
self-opinionated, in trying to draw his aunt mainly 
as a mirror of Christian perfection for the " edifica- 
tion " of " the world," has unwittingly laid undue 
stress upon her piety — such portion of it, at least, 
as comes within his narrow purview — and in order 
to emphasise this, he has glossed over other qualities 
which in her correspondence make her lovable. 
But, at the same time, piety was a leading charac- 
teristic of her nature. Mrs Montagu quotes to her 
sister a remark of her husband's about Mrs Carter : 
** . . . She would be a good sort of woman if she 
was not so pious." But Edward Montagu, as 
Dr Beattie reminds us, '' set too much value on 
mathematical evidence, and piqued himself too 
much on his knowledge in that science." Her 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 277 

friends were constantly appealing to Mrs Carter 
to remove their religious difficulties, and she wrote 
larore numbers of letters to confute their fears and 
to resolve their doubts. Mrs Vesey seems to have 
been the friend made most unhappy by scepticism, 
and we have already shown what profound sym- 
pathy Mrs Carter evinced with the " Sylph's " 
irresponsible idealistic nature. In one curious 
letter we read : " Why did you start and turn 
your eyes to the opening door.-^ Ah, my dear 
Mrs Vesey, the heart is wiser and honester than 
the head. If, at that hour of silence and solemn 
thought, Lady Anne (Dawson) had been permitted 
to stand before you, could even that have been 
more convincing than the voice of common sense, 
which, with intuitive perception, assents to the 
truth of eternal revelation, and pronounces it im- 
possible that such virtue could ever die." In the 
prosaic Eighteenth Century it is remarkable to find 
a strong belief in apparitions and the influence of 
the dead. Yet among Dr Johnson's papers, dis- 
covered after his death, was this prayer : " . . . If 
Thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to minister 
to the living, and appointed my departed wife to 
have care of me, grant that I may enjoy the good 
effects of her attention and ministration, whether 
exercised ly appearance, impulses, dreams, or 
in any other manner agreeable to Thy govern- 
ment. ..." Boswell adds that he, whom it has 
pleased God to afflict in a similar manner, had 



278 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

" certain experience of benignant communication by 
dreams." 

Mrs Carter's biographer endeavours to prove 
that she would hold acquaintance with none but 
those of strictest principle. To some extent this is 
true. She had been brought up in an ecclesiastical 
atmosphere, though her father himself was a broad- 
minded cleric, as is shown by his objection to the 
Athanasian Creed. The compromise he agreed to, 
by which his brother paid a curate to read it for 
him, is a curious and even comic solution of a con- 
scientious scruple. Mrs Carter numbered among 
churchmen many friends of integrity and standing. 
Hannah More gives an interesting criticism of 
Mrs Carter's religious views. Writing in 1809 she 
says : " Her calm, orderly mind dreaded nothing 
so much as irregularity ; she was therefore most 
strictly High Church, and most scrupulously forebore 
reading any book, which proceeded from any other 
quarter. . . . The exactness of her morality was 
exquisite, but her dread of enthusiasm cooled and 
cramped her genius and spirit." Dr Johnson, 
whose friendship she enjoyed for some fifty years, 
was of a deeply religious temperament, as is 
evidenced by the Prayers and Meditations 
published after his death. Characteristically 
enough, he was her favourite author, and in a 
letter to her he expressed a respect "which I 
neither owe nor pay to any other." Mrs Carter 
contributed two papers to The Rambler, Nos. 44 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 279 

and loo : one of them being on Religion and 
Superstition. Superstition is there personified 
thus: "She was dressed in black; her skin was 
contracted into a thousand wrinkles, her eyes deep 
sunk in her head, and her complexion pale and 
livid as the countenance of Death." Religion 
approaches ''as the most lovely object I had ever 
beheld. The most engaging charms of youth and 
beauty appeared in all her form ; effulgent glories 
sparkled in her eyes, and their awful splendour were 
softened by the gentlest looks of compassion and 
peace." This is all a little obvious, but it indicates 
the turn of writer and editor. Lord Lyttleton, 
too, another friend, author of Obse')^ations on the 
Conversion of St Paul, w-as a man of Christian 
character and profession and is credited with having 
established Mrs Montagu's religious convictions. 
He wrote the Prefatory verses to Mrs Carter's 
volume of Poems published in 1762, extolling her 
above Sappho : — 

" For the sacred head 
Of Britain's poetess the Virtues twine 
A nobler wreath by them from Eden's grove 
Unfading gather'd, and direct the hand 
Of Montagu to fix it on her brows." 

These poems were dedicated to yet another 
friend, the Earl of Bath. He accompanied Mrs 
Montagu and Mrs Carter on their tour to Spa, and 
he appears not only to have possessed unfailing 



280 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

charm, but to have led an exemplary life. In 1761, 
Mrs Carter wrote to Miss Talbot an amusing 
letter from Tunbridge Wells with reference to the 
assiduous attention of these two lords upon herself 
and Mrs Montagu. Referring to some rumour 
that Lady A. was preferred to themselves she says : 
*' Whenonefineofentleman said to another fine g^entle- 
man upon the Pantiles, * she talks Greek faster than 
any woma^i in E^igland^ ; pray was this meant of 
my Lady A — ? Or, when the market-folks in the 
side walk left their pigs and their fowls to squall 
their hearts out, while they told each other, 
* Sartamly she is the greatest Scollard in the world' ; 
was the person they stared at, and directed their 
sticks to, my Lady A..*^" 

Mrs Carter could not have been so generally 
loved and esteemed, nor could she have held Mrs 
Montagu and Mrs Vesey for intimate friends, if 
she had not possessed a large share of tolerance 
for the frivolities, weaknesses, and failings of 
humanity. In early life she knew and corresponded 
with the unfortunate Savage, and in later life she 
seems to have had some liking for Horace Walpole, 
then Lord Orford, who, among other attentions, 
sent her a poem of Hannah More's, ** Bishop 
Bonner's Ghost," which he had insisted on printing 
at his press at Strawberry Hill. Fanny Burney 
describes Mrs Carter thus in her advanced years : 
" She is a noble-looking woman ; I never saw age 
so graceful in the female sex yet ; her whole face 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-180G) 281 

seems to beam with goodness, piety, and philan- 
thropy." 

In spite of her narrowness in certain directions, 
we may think that Mrs Carter would not have 
been out of sympathy with many developments 
of this century. The athletic girl would pro- 
bably have appealed to her : as witness this extract 
from an early letter of hers, written in the winter 
time: "In proportion as my sister has mended, I 
have now recovered my spirits ; I am now nearly as 
gay and wild as ever, and want to be flying all over 
the face of the earth, thouo-h this weather some- 

o 

thing cramps my genius, for I cannot meet with 
anybody here romantic enough to take moonlight 
walks in the snow, and travel as people do in 
Lapland." Indeed throughout these letters there 
are indications of an adventurous spirit which in 
another centurv mio;ht have made of Mrs Carter 
an explorer in unknown lands. To this ill-health 
is no barrier, as Mrs Bishop's case proves. It is 
probable too that Mrs Carter would have sym- 
pathised with woman's fight for independence. 
Though she cannot be said to have lived by her 
pen, at least it laid the foundation of her small 
competence, which was supplemented by annuities 
from Mrs Montagu after the death of her husband, 
and from the heirs of the Earl of Bath. Also she 
relished certain enjoyments, so pathetically satirised 
by Kipling in The Light that Failed. " Besides," 
she writes, " whenever I dine by myself, I revel in 



282 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

cake and tea, a kind of independent luxury in which 
one needs very little apparatus, and no attendants, 
and is mighty consistent with loitering over a 
book." She believed in the equality of the sexes, 
and considered that women did not occupy the 
position which was their due. Her biographer 
relates how one day at Lambeth Palace she com- 
plained to the Archbishop of the unfair manner in 
which our translators have rendered the 12th 
and 13th verses of the seventh chapter of the first 
Epistle to the Corinthians ; that for the evident 
purpose of supporting the superiority of the 
husband they had translated the same verb, as 
applied to the husband, put away, and as applied 
to the wife, leave \ Let him 7iot put her away, and 
let her not leave him. The Archbishop denied the 
fact, and asserted that the words in the original 
were not the same ; but finding his antagonist 
obstinate, " Come with me, Madam Carter," said 
he at length, '' to my study and be confuted." 
They went, and his Grace, on consulting the 
passage, instead of being angry that he was 
found to be in the wrong, said with the 
utmost good humour, '* No, Madam Carter, 'tis 
I that must be confuted, and you are in the 
right." 

Mrs Carter always took special delight in any 
proofs of women's talents. She admired Madame 
d'Arblay's novels, Mrs Radcliffe's works, and the 
Plays of Joanna Baillie ; and she would, no doubt 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 283 

have endorsed the sentiment in the following verse 
igned M.A. (probably Mary Astell), and prefixed 
to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters from 
Constantinople, though the letters themselves were 
too free-spoken for her admiration : — 

" Let the male authors with an envious eye 
Praise coldly, that they may the more decry : 
Women (at least I speak the sense of some) 
This little spirit of rivalship o'ercome. 
I read with transport, and with joy I greet 
A genius so sublime, and so complete, 
And gladly lay my laurels at her feet." 

But it was not in the nature of Mrs Carter in 
any way to try and enforce this, to her, merely 
private opinion on the position of women ; and 
Mrs Mary AstelFs rabid tracts, forcible and 
bitter, condemning the foolishness of women in 
their race after husbands, and exposing in flam- 
boyant colours the tyranny of men, would have 
met as little with Mrs Carter's approval as 
the principles displayed in Mary Wollstone- 
craft's '' wild theory concerning the Rights of 
Women," which her biographer tells us she 
detested. 

Mrs Carter belonged, and she herself says, "to 
the quiet-looking, silent people," and she seems 
to have won the esteem of the ** good and great," 
by never endeavouring to obtain it. We have 
already spoken of her acquaintance with the 
"good" : as to the "great," the Queen desired to 



284 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

be introduced to her, and this ceremony took place 
at Lord Cremorne's house at Chelsea in 1791. 
The Princess of Wales came to tea with her at 
her house at Deal, at Mrs Carter's usual hour of 
six, and stayed above two hours. In Mrs Carter's 
case we feel that it must have been her attain- 
ments, rather than her personality, that drew 
royal attention. Yet Mrs Montagu embroidered 
the homespun of this character with many graceful 
twists of phrases : *' I had been long deprived of 
the pleasure of wandering amongst the aromatics 
of Parnassus ; when I have my full range I only 
idly sport there like the butterfly ; you are the 
honey-bee, and extract the precious essence," she 
writes. We may conclude with another extract 
from a letter of Mrs Montagu's, which embodies 
in its brevity a very happy excursion into fancy 
and into philosophy : — 

'' Will your head never be cured of those painful 
diseases, thinking and aching ? . . . Alas no ! 
Our perfections and imperfections are more 
intimately united, and more closely woven into 
our frame than we are apt to imagine ; the 
destinies dye the wool before they spin our thread ; 
they use none but grain colours, and sun, wind, 
and rain, and the force of external accidents 
operate but little. Hypatia would have been a 
philosopher, and Sappho a wit, though they had 
been educated at a French boarding-school at 
Chelsea or Kensington. You are destined to 



ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) 285 

have wisdom and the headache, and all the folly 
of the multitude and knowledge of physicians 
cannot prevent it. Perhaps on the delicacy of the 
same fine nerve depends your acute reasoning and 
acute pain." 



THE BLUE-STOCKINGS IN THE 
GARDEN 

TH E usual picture presented to us of Eighteenth- 
century Hfe is a picture within walls — not 
necessarily within the walls of houses but within 
the enclosure of the town. Not only in the 
Eighteenth Century did bricks and mortar make 
channels for life at its fiercest, but we are apt to 
imagine the whole interest of existence concentrated 
within their narrow sphere. Sometimes indeed a 
window is opened on the country-side, and we 
have a glimpse of the rolling '* Seasons" over a 
prospect of hamlets brown and dim discovered 
spires ; we hear afar off the clash of Chevy Chase, 
and in remoter distance discern the ghosts of 
Ossianic heroes. These sights and sounds are 
acclaimed by subsequent critics as portents of the 
approaching '' return to nature," and of the coming 
advent of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, 
and their successors. 

An open casement here and there : we are 
inclined to fancy this the only passage through 
which the country was wafted in upon Eighteenth- 
century life. But Nature was approaching much 

more swiftly, much more concretely, much more 

286 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN THE GARDEN 287 

effectively by way of the Eighteenth Century 
Garden. 

For the latter half of the Eighteenth Century 
marks a violent reaction against the formal garden 
in England — against the terrace, the straight 
canals, the walls of yew, the arcades of holly and 
box — all those methods by which it was attempted 
"to form with verdure w^hat the builder formed 
with stone." The geometry of the garden had 
become even more precise under the influence of 
Dutch William, and protest, both practical and 
theoretic, began to come from the most unexpected 
quarters. Addison of the smooth line and Pope of 
the exquisite polish, condemn — in the Garden — 
the clipping of trees and borders and the effort 
after level uniformity. " Our trees rise in Cones, 
Globes, Pyramids," Addison complains, '' we see 
the mark of the scissors upon every plant and 
bush." Pope wittily imagines the perfections in 
artifice produced by an eminent town gardener of 
his invention who thus advertises his bargains. 
''Adam and Eve in yew, Adam a little shattered 
by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great 
storm ; Eve and the Serpent very flourishing. . . . 
Divers eminent modern poets in bays, somewhat 
blighted, to be disposed of a pennyworth." Pope 
did more than theorise and jeer. Horace Walpole 
thus describes his garden at Twickenham. " Pope 
had twisted and twirled and rhymed and 
harmonised his little five acres till it appeared 



288 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

two or three sweet little lawns opening and 
opening beyond one another, and the whole 
surrounded with thick impenetrable woods." It 
sounds delightful — but not quite natural. Indeed 
it has been unkindly called '*a complicated piece 
of mimicry of rural scenery of all sorts." 

The ideal garden of the Eighteenth Century was 
no longer a walled space, under unnatural and 
despotic laws, but aimed at being part of the 
landscape, one with nature, blending imperceptibly 
into the surrounding scenery. In order to avoid 
arresting the eye by an arbitrary division between 
the garden and the country outside, the Eighteenth 
Century invented the curious device of a sunk 
fence, also called by the name of '*Ha-Ha!" 
owing to the involuntary exclamation of surprise 
prompted by coming upon it unexpectedly. This 
invention is the ''capital stroke" of landscape 
gardening. Horace Walpole says of the famous 
landscape gardener Kent : "He leaped the fence 
and saw that all nature was a garden." Even the 
gardens of Vauxhall, which Fanny Burney 
complains of as being too formal, were separated 
by a *' Ha-Ha ! " from the adjoining hayfields ; 
and Monsieur d'Arblay worked with his own 
hands at a sunk fence round the garden of Camilla 
Cottage near Box Hill. 

England is rich in the literature of the garden. 
Not only have we the embroidered imagination 
of Chaucer's gardens, of Spenser's gardens, of 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN THE GARDEN 289 

Milton's garden ; we have the descriptive 
enthusiasm of Bacon and of Cowley, while the 
movement against formalism in the Eighteenth 
Century has its blank-verse chronicle in William 
Mason's English Garden, and finds lyrical treat- 
ment in other poems. The Eighteenth Century 
also gave us that amazing and characteristic pro- 
duction — ''the most delicious poem upon earth," 
Horace Walpole calls it — Erasmus Darwin's 
Botanic Garden. This poem, all polish and 
sparkle, with its impossible faery hierarchy and 
unconvincing personifications, is as much a 
curiosity of literature as of garden-lore. 

William Mason is the Blue-Stocking who in the 
Bas Bleu masquerades as Maro. The formal 
garden is to him an object of abhorrence. He 
writes of Sir William Temple's famous garden 
at Moor Park : — 

"behold what Temple called 

A perfect garden. There thou shalt not find 
One blade of verdure, but with aching feet 
From Terras down to Terras shalt descend 
Step following step by tedious flights of stairs. 
On leaden platforms now the noonday sun 
Shall scorch thee ; now the dark arcades of stone 
Shall chill thy fervour. . . ." 

Nature is to be the model for the gardener, 
nature, bold in effect, prodigal in shade — 
nature, ever various, whose forms are undulat- 
ing and whose lines are curves. The gardener 

19 



290 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

should approach his garden as the artist his 
canvas : — 

..." Take thy plastic spade 

It is thy pencil ; take thy seeds, thy plants, 

These are thy colours. . . ." 

Mason describes the hues appropriate to the 
foreground, the middle distance and the back- 
ground of the garden picture — the foreground is 
to bear conspicuously vivid green, warm brown 
and opaque black ; sober olive marks the second 
distance, while the third declines thence into soft 
blue and faintest purple. Mason gives directions 
for planting proper foliage at appointed intervals ; 
for varying and mixing the chosen greens ; for 
applying universally the principle of the soft and 
melting curve ; for guiding the pathway so that 
each step shall awake fresh beauties. He also 
considers in much detail the fence, the flower-bed, 
and the ornamentation of the garden by means 
of such structures as the Temple, the Obelisk, the 
Column, and the Triumphal Arch ; features which, 
together with the grotto, are so characteristic of 
Eighteenth Century garden life. 

No garden, however small, was complete without 
one of these curious constructions. There was, 
of course. Pope's famous grotto composed of 
'* marbles, spars, gems, ores and minerals " : when 
Mrs Delany visited the Garricks at their villa on 
the Thames, the company took tea and coffee 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN THE GARDEN 291 

at the end of the lawn sloping to the River in 
Shakespeare's Temple '' where there is a very fine 
statue of Shakespeare in white marble, and a 
great chair with a large carved frame that was 
Shakespeare s own chairs Mrs Delany herself 
designed a grotto for the Duchess of Portland : 
and she describes a famous grotto at Clifton 
thus : — 

'' Opposite the entrance there is an arch and 
a sort of a rocky cave ; four pillars support a dome 
with a skylight on the left hand in perspective, one 
arch within another ; there is a statue of a river- 
god ; a cascade falls from thence over rocks, coral, 
shells, and is received by a basin ; the walls on 
each hand are richly, irregularly, and very boldly 
adorned with everything the earth and sea can 
produce proper for the purpose." 

Indeed, the memoirs of the time are full of 
descriptions of these artificialities, which har- 
monised but ill with the new ideals that were 
pushing their way through tree and lawn. 

As is the universal way with reformers, the land- 
scape gardeners were somewhat reckless in their 
devastation. Many a formal garden of great 
beauty that had matured to a delicate richness and 
discovered subtle harmonies with its surroundings 
was ruthlessly destroyed. And, moreover, artifici- 
ality inevitably crept into the methods of the land- 
scape gardeners. Sir Walter Scott, indeed. 



292 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

condemns the English Garden as affectation 
labouring to seem simple. And there is presump- 
tion in this landscape gardening, too. We are 
inclined to smile when we read that the " eood " 
Lord Lyttelton, Mrs Montagu's friend, and one 
of the Blue-stockings, was praised for "the new 
modelling of the shades and the unfettering of the 
rills " at his place Hagley, in Worcestershire. At 
the same time it is significant that Thomson in 
his Seasons — Thomson, one of the heralds of the 
return to Nature — made Hagley his choice for 
panegyric in his Spring. Hagley Park appears 
in this poem simply as a landscape : we read of 
dales '' with woods o'erhung, and shagg'd with 
mossy rocks"; of "solemn oaks that tuft the 
swelling mounds " ; while from the fair brow of the 
height "the bursting prospect spreads immense 
around." For, with all its recklessness, its affecta- 
tions, its mistakes, landscape gardening is indica- 
tive of a new era ; it implies an awakening to 
larger beauties, a desire for further horizons. The 
formal garden has all the sharp vivid definition of 
mediaeval times, which concentrated such marvel- 
lous colour and vitality in a tiny space ; the land- 
scape garden is characteristically modern, wider, 
vaguer in stretch, attempting the difficult, the 
impossible. 

The garden played a distinctive part in the lives 
of most of the Blue-Stockings. They spent their 
childhood as a rule in formal gardens, for these 



BLUESTOCKINGS IN THE GARDEN 293 

had not yet come under the touch of the land- 
scape gardener. Thus Mount Morris, EHzabeth 
Robinson's home, was surrounded by walled 
gardens of the geometric type. This type was 
not, however, universal. The garden of Thomas 
Mulso at Twywell, Northamptonshire, seems to 
have been a piece of natural scenery left almost 
untouched. We read of orchards baskinof in the 
sunshine ''enriched by a cheerful piece of water," 
which was surrounded by timber trees and fringed 
with lowly shrubs, "affording altogether a wild 
scene of tranquil beauty, indescribably interesting," 
to quote from the ambiguous description of Mr 
Cole of Scarborough. 

Mrs Delany at Delville, near Dublin, and Mrs 
Thrale at Streatham Place, had both of them 
formal gardens. Dr Delany, into that garden of 
his, so small that a crow flying over it made 
it night, and a snail crept round it in a minute, 
had crammed a most ordered minutise of conven- 
tionalities. The walks were straio^ht, terminatinsf 
in little porticoes, and there were valleys crossed 
by level artificial mounds, while on the highest 
point was a temple decorated by Mrs Delany. 
This dainty and ingenious decorum had no doubt 
its attraction for her. She herself describes 
a very charming breakfast scene in this garden 
(June, 1750):— 

*' My garden is, at present, in the high glow of 



294 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

beauty, my cherries ripening, roses, jessamine and 
pinks in full bloom, and the hay partly spread and 
partly in cocks, complete the rural scene. We 
have discovered a new breakfasting place under 
the shade of nut-trees, impenetrable to the sun's 
rays, in the midst of a grove of elms where we 
shall breakfast this morning ; I have ordered 
cherries, strawberries and nosegays to be laid on 
our breakfast table, and have appointed a harper to 
be here to play to us during our repast, who is to 
be hid among the trees." 

The grace, the artistic feeling of Mrs Delany 
are apparent in these arrangements ; just as the 
emotional appeal of Mrs Vesey is evidenced in the 
surroundings that are imagined for her. For Mrs 
Vesey is not to be associated with anything so 
ordered as a garden. But Lucan (near Dublin) 
was situated in wald and picturesque scenery, and 
" I figure you to myself," says Mrs Carter, '' con- 
templating the faded woods, catching the first 
whisper of the languid gale and walking beneath 
the falling leaves, and in these pensive amusements 
so congenial to the tenderest feelings of the heart 
thinking over all your absent friends." 

The vast grounds at Streatham Place, with their 
luxurious ice-houses and pineries and high-walled 
enclosures, are symbolic of the solidity of the 
Thrales. The gardens were laid out in the old- 
fashioned method ; the Thrales were insensitive, 



BLUE-STOCKINGS IN THE GARDEN 295 

we fancy, to the more subtle influences of the age. 
Yet one of Mrs Thrale's happiest images is a 
garden image. She says charmingly of Dr 
Johnson : " His mind resembled a royal pleasure 
garden within whose ample dimensions, everything 
subservient to dignity, beauty or utility was to be 
found ; from the stately cedar down to the lowliest 
plant or herb." The gardens of Streatham Place, 
which must have suggested this simile, have thus 
stretched out a root into literature and flourish in a 
remote corner of its evero^reen domains. 

Mrs Montagu, who also had great wealth, who 
''in trifles" always conformed to the fashion and 
who had a sincere feelino^ for the beauties of 
nature, submitted one of her gardens to the direc- 
tion of the most famous landscape gardener of 
the day, "Capability" Brown — mentioned in the 
Bas Bleu. Brown's nickname is due to his 
frequent use of the phrase : " This spot has 
great capabilities." He was Gardener Royal at 
Hampton Court, and planted the famous vine 
there in 1796. He refused, however, to reorganise 
the artificial orounds of the Palace as Georofe HI. 
desired, and merely suggested that the trees should 
be allowed to grow in their natural way. The 
alterations of Mrs Montagu's garden at Sandleford, 
in Berkshire, are charmingly described in a letter 
from Hannah More to Pepys : — 



" Sandleford is amazingly improved ; you would 



296 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

recant your former errors, which brought you into 
disgrace could you see with what happiness Brown 
has beckoned the distant hills to come into prospect. 
His hand, with an art nobler than that of Midas, 
turns gold itself into beauty." 

Mrs Carter and Hannah More had only small 
gardens, little radiant spots outside any elaborate 
scheme where flowers seemed to bubble up out of 
the earth. Elizabeth Carter was always slipping 
out into the garden for rest and refreshment. 
Hannah More was an ardent gardener, and she 
loved her garden so much that at times she 
wondered if such passion of joy were consistent 
with her religion. These two gardens are little 
places of rapture and peace, with the divinity of 
nature warmer in them, perhaps, than when she is 
more obtrusively captured. 

And, finally, we must not forget those little 
gardens in Surrey where Monsieur dArblay worked 
with such energy and such ignorance. It is a 
pathetic picture ; we see Fanny at the window of 
her cottage at Bookham stitching the little clothes 
or writing her Camilla, and looking up every now 
and again at her husband digging — this brave 
seigneur : and wondering what struggles, what 
hardships, the uncertain future held. The garden 
here is a resource from bitter thoughts, an outlet 
for action. 

Yet Madame d'Arblay writes gaily, even humor- 



BLUESTOCKINGS IN THE GARDEN 297 



ously, of her husband's gardening exploits. He 
had no preconceived theories, no knowledge even 
of gardening, and his experience was gained solely 
by the deductive method. He demolished an 
asparagus bed, protesting nothing could look more 
like ''des mauvaises herbes " ; he spent immense 
toil planting and transplanting strawberries round 
the hedge, unaware that they would bear no fruit 
the first year. His greatest passion was for trans- 
planting. '' Everything we possess he moves from 
one end of the garden to the other to produce 
better effects. Roses take the place of jessamines, 
jessamines of honeysuckles, and honeysuckles of 
lilacs, till they have all danced round as far as the 
space allows ; but whether the effect may not be a 
general mortality, summer only can determine." 
Madame d'Arblay gives a charming and vivid 
sketch of her husband mowing down the hedge 
with his sabre — " and with an air and attitude so 
military that, if he had been hewnng down other 
legions than those he encountered — i.e. of spiders — 
he could scarcely have had a mien more tremendous 
or have demanded an arm more mighty. Heaven 
knows I am ' the most contente personne in the 
world' to see his sabre so employed." 

So in the garden, the old and the new existed 
side by side ; so in some gardens, the new order 
superseded the old, and the attempt was made to 
include the wider landscape in the picture and to 
harmonise narrow spots of cultivation with Nature's 



298 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

grander scheme. This breaking down of walls, 
this concealment of barriers, seems preparatory to 
an age of expansion in many directions — to an age 
of more extended reach, of more searching aspira- 
tions, to an age poignantly aware *' of portals 
opening, of an hour prepared, prophesied ..." 

The women too, whom present-day idealists 
picture as so securely sheltered behind high walls, 
were, as a matter of fact, looking out free and far 
over the surrounding country ; and we may, perhaps, 
consider that sunk fence or '* ha-ha !" symbolic of 
the fact that woman's domain was no longer neces- 
sarily to be included within narrow limits, but that 
she was at liberty to travel as far into the beyond 
as her capacities would take her. 



I 



■ ■&lf^y. 




HANNAH MORE 

FROM AX ENGRAVING BY A. HALBERT AFTER THE PICTURE BY OPIE IN I786 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1833). 



HANNAH MORE had the good fortune to 
be born just in the nick of time. Her 
talents, particularly adapted to the needs of her 
age, brought her remarkable social success, wide 
popularity and a large fortune. Her works have 
interest for this generation also, for she had the 
gift of seizing and fixing in verse and in prose 
certain characteristic movements of her age. She 
crystallised the dispersed elements of the Blue 
Stocking assemblies in her poem, the Bas Bleu. 
Her tragedy, Earl Percy ^ brought out with great 
success by Garrick, remains typical of the con- 
ventional heroic drama of that age ; her Cheap 
Repository Tracts, written to counteract the broad- 
spread principles of the French Revolution, have 
the great interest of being among the first suc- 
cessful literary appeals to the populace ; while 
the schools she established were early heralds of 
the important educational movement which took 
place towards the close of the Nineteenth 
Century. 

At first sight her character appears full of 
contradictions. She makes appeal to the demo- 
cracy : and at the same time embodies in her 



399 



300 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

ballads and schools the principle of authority, the 
doctrine of Church and State and a rigid system 
of caste. She realises the importance of educa- 
tion ; but halts on the very threshold. She 
writes a successful tragedy ; and abjures the 
theatre. She suffers the most unwarrantable 
persecution from a clergyman ; and introduces 
an ''exemplary parish minister" into every one 
of her narrative tracts. But these contradictions 
are only apparent, and her biographers generally 
are far too anxious to draw a strict line be- 
tween the Hannah More who mixed freely with 
the great world, and the Hannah More who 
tried in vain to live the life of a recluse at 
Cowslip Green and Barley Wood. From the 
very first she was a woman of intense religious 
conviction and high moral ideal ; and to the very 
end she retained her fondness for social inter- 
course, though she did not allow herself the 
same freedom of indulgence in the pleasures of 
the world as in earlier days. Writing to Sir W. 
W. Pepys, in 1817, she says, "I really can say 
that age, as far as I can judge, has in no degree 
subdued the natural gaiety of my temper, and I 
hope it is no infringement on better things, that 
my taste for humour, and a sort of sensible non- 
sense, is no whit diminished." 

Hannah More is interesting by reason of her 
intuitions and of her limitations — her sense of 
the coming of a new epoch, and her incapacity to 



HANN'AH MORE (1745-1833) 301 

anticipate its needs. She stood on the threshold 
of a new age. the age of democracy ; she felt 
dimly the stirrings of its latent powers ; she 
tried to influence and to mould that mass of 
inchoate thought. Yet with all her power of 
sympathy, with all her understanding of suffer- 
ing, she built her schools on the basis of a 
narrow sectarianism, which involved her in the 
most cruel persecution. 

The bare facts of her life must be summed up 
briefly. She was born in 1 745 at Stapleton, near 
Bristol, the daughter of a schoolmaster, and one 
of five girls. Her three eldest sisters established 
a Boarding School at Bristol, which soon became 
fashionable and even celebrated, and when 
Hannah was old enough she took part in the 
teaching. At the age of twenty- two she be- 
came engaged to a man of property in the 
neio^hbourhood much older than herself, but as 
he kept deferring the date of marriage, her 
friends dissuaded her from continuing the en- 
gagement. Her talents had made her locally 
celebrated, and she had published a pastoral 
drama for the use of o^irls' schools. The Search 
after Happiness, so she visited London in 1772 
with something of a reputation. In 1785, at the 
age of forty, she retired to a cottage, Cowslip 
Green, in the Mendip \'alley. and afterwards 
built for herself a more commodious house in 
the same neighbourhood (1801), Barley Wood, 



302 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

where she was joined by her four sisters, who 
had now gained a competency. This she only 
quitted after the death of all her sisters, to take 
up her residence at Clifton, 1828, where she lived 
till her death in 1833. 

The social triumphs brought to Hannah More 
by her literary successes were as signal as those 
enjoyed by Fanny Burney. Hannah More moved 
in circles as intellectual and more select : she went, 
not only to the general assemblies, but to the 
more intimate parties. While by temperament 
she had the same power of enthusiasm and the 
same exuberance of spirits as Fanny Burney, 
she was far less occupied with her own person- 
ality and was of a much more serious cast of 
mind, which enabled her to keep herself to some 
extent disentangled, aloof, able to play the part 
of spectator, to observe, to analyse, and finally 
to concentrate in her poem of Bas Blett the 
particular social movement with which she was 
associated. This poem, of which it will be re- 
membered that Johnson said " there was no 
name in poetry that might not be glad to own 
it," stands to some extent as the text of this 
book and has had separate consideration. It 
well illustrates Hannah More's remarkable power 
of catching the flying moment on the wing. 
That her opportunities were great her memoirs 
and letters abundantly prove. They throw a 
good deal of light on the social life of the time, 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) 303 

and contribute larofelv to our knowledge of its 
distinguished persons. 

Her most intimate friends were the Garricks. 

In 1773. on a visit to London, her admiration 
for the acting of Garrick in Lear expressed in a 
letter to a mutual friend, led to an introduction, 
and the Garricks in their turn introduced her to 
the brilliant circle of their acquaintance. She 
paid long visits to them at their house at Adelphi 
Terrace, and at their house at Hampton, where 
they generally spent a day or two every week, 
particularly Sunda3^ Her friendship with husband 
and wife seems to have been a perfect relation and 
is a revelation of their constant tact and kindness. 
Mrs Delany, who visited Garricks villa at Hampton 
in 1770, pays a warm tribute to Mrs Garricks good 
sense and gentleness of manner, and the excellence 
of her taste. In 1776 Hannah More, writing from 
Adelphi Terrace, says, " I am so much at my ease ; 
have a great many hours at my own disposal : read my 
own books and see mv own friends." The Garricks 
generally had company at meals to save time, and 
Hannah More met at their table ** the most polished 
and delightful society in the world." On one occa- 
sion when she was ill in lodgings she writes : '"At 
six this evening, when Garrick came to the Turks 
Head to dine, there accompanied him in the coach 
a minced chicken in a stew-pan. hot. a canister of 
fine tea, and a pot of cream. Were there ever 
such people ! Tell it not in epic or in lyric, that 



304 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

the Great Roscius rode with a stew-pan of minced 
meat with him for my dinner." For Garrick's 
genius Hannah More possessed the most profound 
admiration, an admiration which he was not slow 
to reciprocate ; he called her '' Nine," because he 
held that in her own person she embodied all the 
muses. Garrick produced her Percy in 1777, 
and his death in 1779 may be regarded as a 
turning - point in her life, determining her more 
definitely on retirement and devotion. She and 
Mrs Garrick continued close friends till the death 
of the latter in 1822, and Hannah More spent 
above twenty winters under her roof 

Hannah Mores friendship with Horace Walpole 
has been somewhat a stumbling-black in the paths 
of her chief biographers. They consider it '' incon- 
sistent" with her principles that she should have 
been on terms so intimate with this " loose and 
light-minded person." And yet, perhaps, nothing 
reveals more strikingly that charm of personality 
possessed by both, which enabled them to appre- 
ciate qualities so different from their own. The 
cynic writes to Hannah More letters instinct with 
delicate understanding ; a deep admiration for all 
that is fine in her underlies his characteristic note 
of raillery. "It is very provoking that people 
must always be hanging or drowning themselves, 
or going mad, that you forsooth, mistress, may 
have the diversion of exercising your pity and 
good-nature, and charity and intercession, and all 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) 305 

that bead-roll of virtues that make you so trouble- 
some and amiable, when you might be ten times 
more agreeable by writing things that would not 
cost above half-a-crown at a time. You are an 
absolutely walking hospital, and travel about into 
lone and bye places with your doors open to 
house stray casualties." And " Saint Hannah," 
as he called her, " thou excellent champion as 
well as practiser of all goodness," met him on 
equal ground with perfect simplicity and thorough 
enjoyment of his wit and conversation. 

For Hannah More Dr Johnson seems to have 
had a warm affection, judging from his terms of 
endearment to her as reported in one of her sister's 
letters, ''child," ^' litde fool," "love," "dearest." 
One of the famous cases in which Boswell impugns 
Mrs Thrale's veracity concerns a remark of Dr 
Johnson's to Hannah More. Mrs Thrale reports 
Dr Johnson as saying to Hannah More that her 
flattery choked him : Boswell's version reads as 
follows : " Dearest lady, consider with yourself 
what your flattery is worth, before you bestow it 
so freely : " while Miss Sarah More in a private 
letter gives the following account of the same 
incident: "They indeed tried who could 'pepper 
the highest ' and it is not clear to me that the 
lexicographer was really the highest seasoner." 
The affair certainly takes a very different complex- 
ion in each of its representations. The following 
characteristic speech of Johnson's is reported by 

30 



306 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

one of the sisters : *' I love you both," cried the 
inamorato, " I love you all five — I never was at 
Bristol — I will come on purpose to see you — what ! 
— five women live happily together ! — I will come 
and see you — I have spent a happy evening — 
I am glad I came — God for ever bless you ; you 
live lives to shame duchesses." Hannah More 
must have had a strong sense of fun when she 
could write : '* I have got the headache to-day, 
by raking out so late with that gay libertine 
Johnson." 

Though one of the most striking and represent- 
ative of Church- women, there was hardly a tincture 
in Hannah More of that gloomy spirit of self- 
analysis and fanaticism which drove such souls as 
Cowper's to despair, and which is faintly reflected 
in the letters to Hannah More of Newton, 
Cowper's friend. The Christianity advocated by 
Mrs Carter, Mrs Chapone and Mrs More was a 
Christianity of active benevolence, as is implied in 
the titles of Hannah M ore's treatises, Practical 
Piety (1811), Christian Morals (18 12), and Moral 
Sketches (18 19). Passive Christianity, meditation, 
prayer in its higher phases, was difficult to them, 
and possessed of dangerous aspects. Mrs Chapone 
indeed tells us that the mystics had at one time 
a great attraction for her, but that she soon 
became convinced of the errors of that state of 
mind. Holding, as these ladies did, very strong 
convictions on doctrinal religion, it is remarkable 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) 307 

how large a measure of tolerance distinguishes 
their judgment. Hannah More was reproached 
by Dr Johnson for reading the Port- Royalists, 
"alleging that as a good Protestant I ought to 
abstain from books written by Catholics. I was 
beginning to stand upon my defence when he 
took me with both hands, and with a tear running 
down his cheeks, ' Child,' said he, with the most 
affecting earnestness, ' I am heartily glad you 
read pious books, by whomsoever they may be 
written.'" In after life Hannah More considered 
that both Johnson and Addison had been too 
general in their religious teaching, and she be- 
lieved the Emancipation of the Catholics to 
be a disintegrating and retrogressive measure ; 
but Catholics and Dissenters were welcome to 
her house in Barley Wood, and she continued 
to read, not only the Jansenists, but the w^orks 
of Puritans and Nonconformists, remarking that 
she found ''nothing more good than the lean of 
their fat." "Christianity is a broad basis," she 
writes. ''Bible Christianity is what I love; that 
does not insist on opinions indifferent in them- 
selves ; a Christianity practical and pure, which 
teaches holiness, humility, repentance, and faith 
in Christ, and which, after summing up all the 
evangelical graces, declares that the greatest of 
these is Charity." Against Methodism, however, 
her feeling was strong ; anything approaching to 
what she calls " enthusiasm " was suspect to her, 



308 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

and extempore prayer, as we shall see later on, 
appeared to her dangerous in the extreme. 

Hannah More's activities cover an immense 
field. Her versatility was extraordinary. She 
lent the weight of her pen to the cause of the 
Slaves, to the cause of the French Emigrant clergy. 
She was eager in her desire for the emancipation of 
the Greeks. She wrote volume and tract as a 
counterblast to the literature of Infidelity, to the 
literature of Revolution. She stood for law and 
order, for Church and State, for authority and 
tradition ; her Cheap Repository Tracts (1795) 
hawked about by pedlars, found their way into the 
poorest cottages and were distributed over the 
whole world. Her life-long friend, Bishop 
Porteous of London, writes : " The sublime and 
immortal publication of the * Cheap Repository ' I 
hear of from every quarter of the globe. To the 
West Indies I have sent ship-loads of them. They 
are read with avidity at Sierra Leone, and I hope 
our pious Scotch missionaries will introduce them 
into Asia." We may add that the organization for 
circulating her tracts is believed to have developed 
into the Religious Tract Society. Hannah More's 
Village Politics by Will Chips, a little pamphlet 
scribbled in one sick day, circulated in London by 
hundred thousands, and was sent by Government 
to Scotland and Ireland, while many patriotic 
persons printed large editions of it at their own 
expense. She attacked the Manners of the Great; 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1888) 309 

and published in 1808 Coelebs in search of a Wife, 
a novel, or rather treatise, entirely ethical in its 
aim, the heroine of which is a modernized version 
of Milton's Eve. This book was so popular that 
it brought her ^2000 in a single year. " From 
the hut of clay to the hall of cedar," to quote the 
grandiloquent Editor of her Memoirs, her influence 
made itself felt. But it is to the sphere of 
Education that her most important work belongs. 

The first production of her pen was the Search 
after Happiness, a pastoral drama, written at the 
age of seventeen for the use of schools. This 
became so popular that we read in Miss Mitford's 
Our Village of its being performed before admiring 
audiences at Reading. Her Biblical dramas fol- 
lowed. Hannah More wrote Strictures o?i Female 
Education, inveighing against the abuse of accom- 
plishments, and she was also the author of other 
educational works. But her most remarkable 
achievement was the establishment in Cheddar and 
its neighbourhood of a large number of Charity 
schools, at the suggestion of her friend Wilberforce, 
and in the teeth of violent opposition. At this 
moment when education is so prominently in the 
minds of all, Mrs More's methods, systems, and 
ideals are of peculiar interest. 

She and her sisters went about the work with 
remarkable thoroughness. At Cheddar, for 
instance, she took a lodging in a little public- 
house, visited and persuaded all the principal 



310 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

farmers, and turned an ox-house into a school- 
room. '' We spent our whole time getting at the 
characters of all the people, the employment, 
wages, and number of every family ; and this we 
have done in our other nine parishes. ..." 

Thus it came about that the poor were no mere 
abstractions to her, but flesh and blood individuals : 
and Will Chip, the Journeyman Carpenter ; the 
Hackney Coachman, thrifty and sober ; Patient 
Joe of the Newcastle Colliery — are all characters 
well within the comprehension of the uneducated, 
while her doggrel ballads, homely and racy, were 
calculated to appeal quickly to their senses. 

" And the true. Rights of Man and the life of his cause 
Is not equal possessions^ but equal just la7vs" 

We of to-day cannot feel the same confidence 
in the laws, or in their administration ; but the 
justice and generosity of the rich was a necessary 
implication in Hannah More's social system : — 

" If sickness o'ertake me the laws of the land 
Hold out to my wants a compassionate hand : 
Should some churlish church-warden presume to oppress, 
At the next justice-meeting I straight get redress." 

Not only do the Justices redress the wrongs 
of the poor, but in the Loyal Weavers the Squire 
gives Tim Jenkins two dinners a week ; the 
Parson distributes potatoes half-price, the health 
of Jack Wilkes is "restored by the gentlefolks' 
soup " : and the gentlefolks provide work for 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) 311 

the unemployed, "so some work in their gardens 
and some on the road." Hannah More's know- 
ledge of the practical needs of the poor is evidenced 
in her Cheap Repository Tracts, in which she 
gives recipes for inexpensive dishes and hints on 
domestic economy. 

Her schools were definitely — one had almost 
said aggressively — Church Schools. Her masters 
and mistresses were chosen chiefly for their 
piety, and they had to perform a large amount 
of parish work, which the clergyman, by reason 
of distance, or of indifference, did not perform. 
As to the curriculum Hannah More writes : 
" My notions of instructing the poor are very 
limited. I allow no writing ; nor any reading 
but the Bible, catechism and such little tracts 
as may enable them to understand the Church 
service." This instruction took place on Sundays ; 
we may note here that Robert Raikes started 
the first Sunday Schools in 1781 ; while Mrs 
Trimmer opened hers at Brentford in 1786. On 
week days Hannah More tells us the children 
learn "such coarse work as may fit them for 
servants." The farmers' sons, however, were 
allowed to learn writing and cyphering, subjects 
unsuited to the children of labourers. This 
experiment of combining teaching with coarse 
work reminds us of Pestalozzi's Institute of the 
Poor, opened in 1775, at which the Swiss 
Educationalist had about fifty children from Zurich, 



312 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Berne and Basle. He employed the children 
in summer with field work and in winter with 
spinning, etc., and in the schools afterwards under 
his direction he continued to make book learning 
and handiwork run parallel. Hannah More and 
Pestalozzi had one and the same aim — to train 
the child to be a sincere Christian. Both of them 
regarded Education principally as a ladder to 
heaven. '' It is recorded that God opened the 
heavens to the patriarch of old and showed him 
a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let 
down to every descendant of Adam ; it is offered 
to thy child. But he must be taught to climb 
it." So writes Pestalozzi ; and the quenchless 
faith and enthusiasm that inspired him breathe 
in the words. But Pestalozzi sought to achieve 
his purpose by a selfless outpouring of human 
love and sympathy, while Hannah More, with 
all her noble if austere energy, relied rather upon 
careful instruction in the catechism. 

The contrast is great when we compare Hannah 
More's somewhat simple fare with the modern 
curriculum of the Board School, and her restricted 
caste system with the modern educational ladder 
by which the poorest child may climb — not to 
heaven — but direct to the University. Indeed, 
when the " higher " education of the poor began 
to be advocated, Hannah More took fright. She 
had done pioneer work in education : but like 
so many pioneers, the recklessness of her successors 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1888) SIS 

Jalarmed her. Speaking of a book on popular 
education she writes : *' Truth compels me to 
bear my public testimony against his extravagant 
plan, which is, that there Is nothing which the 
poor ought not to be taught ; they must not stop 
short of science." Such a doctrine she considers 
not only absurd, but dangerous ; and she desires 
Parliament ''to steer the middle way between 
the Scylla of brutal Ignorance and the Charybdis of 
a literary education." Yet however we may dis- 
approve of Hannah More's educational limitations, 
we must allow that her aim was of a high nobility, 
— that she had a truer conception of the worth 
of ethical and moral training than many of the 
utilitarian educationalists of our day. She accepted 
the conditions of class ; they were part of her 
hierarchy ; as to the training of the faculties 
of mind — education in its proper sense — she does 
not seem to have had any clear conception. 
She wished her system to produce God-fearing 
and virtuous men and women : and firmly believed 
this result could be obtained by scripture-lessons 
and sermons. 

We must not omit reference to the Blagdon 
controversy, since this ''furious feud" illustrates 
the danger of Irresponsible clerical control. Mr 
Bere combined the duties of magistrate and 
clergyman at Blagdon, and persuaded Mrs More, 
who was in delicate health and overburdened with 
work, to establish a school in the village (1795). 



314 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

This was put under the charge of a schoohiiaster 
named Young. Presently rumours got abroad that 
Young was indulging in Methodistical practices, 
putting questions on spiritual experience, and 
encouraging the young people in extemporary 
prayer. Hannah More had him severely repri- 
manded for this breach of the regulations and 
forbade the weekly instruction of adults by the 
schoolmaster, and the offence was never repeated. 
The clergyman next accused Young of traducing 
his (Bere's) character; and Hannah More was 
put in the painful predicament of having to choose 
whether to dismiss Young, and ruin his career, or 
to act against her invariable practice not to 
maintain a school " without the full consent and 
countenance of the resident officiating minister." 
On other occasions she had at the request of the 
clergy dismissed teachers, not merely for a 
''tendency to enthusiasm," but for a suspicion of 
such tendency : but in this case she felt that Young 
might be suffering under an unjust accusation, and 
to her lasting credit she required further evidence 
before laying an imputation on his moral character. 
Bowing to the recommendation of a local tribunal, 
she dissolved the school in 1800, reopened it at 
the request of the Bishop, and dissolved it again 
by her own desire. For three years she was the 
object of dastardly attacks, which caused her serious 
suffering. She herself states that the motive of the 
clergyman was to attract notice and get preferment 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) 315 

by representing- her schools as seminaries of vice, 
sedition and disaffection. The question became a 
national one, canvassed in the leading reviews ; 
libellous tracts, hateful caricatures, accusations of 
the most grotesque character were aimed at Hannah 
More. She writes in 1802, ''Battered, hacked, 
scalped, tom-a-hawked as I have been for three 
years, and continue to be, brought out every month 
as an object of scorn and abhorrence, I seem to 
have nothing to do in the world " (of society). 

Through all this crisis it is only fair to say that 
she had the support of the leaders of the Church. 
Bishop Porteous of London, with whom for twenty 
years she spent a month every year at Fulham 
Palace, only once wavered in his faith in her. 
She refused to answer her traducers, and the ugly 
affair dragged on until she closed the school. 

Her active benevolence was occupied in many 
other schemes besides founding schools. She was 
a woman of large heart, in whom pity worked 
powerfully — " blackmanity " Horace Walpole called 
her sympathy with the slaves. Not only causes 
but individuals awakened her interest and en- 
deavours. There was the milkwoman of poetical 
genius at Bristol, " Lactilla " the literary world 
named her, for whom Hannah More raised a large 
subscription ; there was the mad girl, Louisa, 
whose personality was involved in romantic 
mystery ; the young heiress, too, who had been 
seduced, in search of whom Hannah More pene- 



316 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

trated into the lowest haunts. Any story of misery 
appealed at once to her sympathy and activity, and 
when she read of a young girl who had thrown 
herself into the lake in St James's Park, in 
masquerade costume, she immediately took cab 
and sought her out in a street of bad fame to 
befriend her. 

In her own part of the country she established 
benefit societies for the women. The wages earned 
were only is. a day, and the subscription to the 
Club was ijd. a week. Out of this Club a sick 
woman received 3s. a week, and 7s. 6d. for a lying- 
in. These Clubs prospered so much that in 1825 
^2000 had accumulated in the three parishes, 
which sum was invested in the funds. In the 
period of distress after the Peninsular War, when 
the miners were threatened with starvation, she 
herself bought up the ore ; and jointly with six 
other persons gave security to Government for 
;^700. In connection with her schools she estab- 
lished annual festivals ; she provided divinity 
students with books, and distributed bibles with 
lavish hand. 

Hannah More's personality is inevitably a little 
hidden under the variety of her multifarious labours. 
Our eyes are drawn away from her to the fruits of 
her active benevolence — to all her practical schemes 
for the improvement of the condition of the poor. 
She is overshadowed by the mass of her writings 
— all, with the exception of the tragedies, avowedly 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) 317 

ethical in aim. The extraordinary popularity of 
these is evidenced by the fact that they were 
translated into many of the languages of Europe 
and the East, and that they brought their author 
some ;/^30,ooo ; but amid all her literary triumph 
she retained a perfect balance, realising that medio- 
crity is often the secret of popularity. '' To what 
is called learning I never had any pretension. 
Life and manners have been the objects of my 
unwearied observation. . . . Considering this 
world as a scene of much action and of little 
comparative knowledge ; not as a stage for ex- 
hibition, or a retreat for speculation, but as a field 
on which the business which is to determine the 
concerns of eternity is to be transacted ; as a place 
of low regard as an end, but of unspeakable im- 
portance as a means ; a scene of short experiment, 
but lasting responsibility ; I have been contented 
to pursue myself, and to present to others, those 
truths, which, if obvious and familiar, are yet 
practical and of general application. ..." The 
amazing energy, the driving power that enabled 
her to accomplish so much, both in the worlds of 
literature and of philanthropy, are necessarily the 
qualities that first strike the imagination ; and had 
we visited her in the Mendip Valley no doubt the 
real Hannah More would have come upon us as a 
surprise, the gentle old lady, delicate in health, full 
of gaiety and humour, quaker-like in her dress, and 
so devoted to her garden that she feared the love of 



318 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

it might prove a stumbling-block in her religious 
path. Her eyes were of a remarkable vivacity, 
and were described by her sisters as "diamond." 
Mr S. C. Hall in his " Memoirs" speaks of them 
as being, when she was eighty, '' the clearest, 
brightest, and most searching that I have ever 
seen ; they were singularly dark — positively black 
they seemed as they looked forth among carefully 
trained tresses of her own white hair — and absolutely 
sparkled while she spoke of those of whom she 
was the venerated link between the present and 
the long past.'^ Those who visited her, and the 
number was legion — she had four hundred visitors 
the first two weeks she spent at Clifton — seem 
to have carried away an impression of something 
unique. Newton, Cowper's friend, who misdoubted 
worldly joys, allows himself to feel in all his letters 
to Hannah More that here is legitimate ground 
for enthusiasm ; he even breaks into rhyme on the 
subject of her cottage of Cowslip Green — a thatched 
cottage, one storey high, giving charming views 
over the surrounding country : — 

" In Helicon could I my den dip 
I might attempt the praise of Mendip ; 
Were bards a hundred I'd outstrip 'em 
If equal to the theme of Shipham : 
But harder still the task, I ween 
To give its due to Cowslip Green." 

Macaulay, who was Hannah More's godson, spent 
many of his holidays at Barley Wood, and Sir 



HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) 319 

George Trevelyan, Macaulay's biographer, gives 
a delio;htful account of Hannah M ore's relation to 
the boy; Sir George Trevelyan calls her "the 
most affectionate and wisest of friends," and tells how 
she made the boy read prose to her by the ell, and 
poetry by the hour ; how she would coax him 
from his books into the o^arden, and how she gave 
him advice and sympathy in all his literary enter- 
prises. 

Hannah More could indeed adapt herself to 
young and to old, as to rich and to poor ; could 
win the approbation and affection of such diverse 
characters as Johnson, Garrick, Horace Walpole, 
Newton, as well as reach the proletariat by her 
common-sense doggerel. Since ever}'thing no 
doubt contributed to her development, she seems 
to have drawn from the Blue-stocking movement, 
whose chronicler she was, nourishment of a vitalising 
kind ; and among the Blue-stocking ladies she 
stands pre-eminent as a force in her age ; as a 
champion of the oppressed, and as a pioneer in 
educational experiment. 



THE BLUE-STOCKINGS AND FEMININE 
OCCUPATIONS 

HP HE RE is an old superstition among men 
•^ which survives to the present day, that 
knowledge in women is fatal, not only to feminine 
charm, but to domestic efficiency. Moliere has 
delightfully stated this view in all its gay incon- 
sequence, in all its innocent egoism : 

. . . "Ton sait tout chez moi, hors ce qu'il faut savoir. 
On y sait comme vont lune, etoile polaire 
Venus, Saturne et Mars, dont je n'ai point affaire ; 
Et dans ce vain savoir, qu'on va chercher si loin. 
On ne sait comme va mon pot, dont j'ai besoin. . . . 
L'un me bnile mon rot en lisant quelque histoire 
L'autre reve a des vers quand je demande a boire." 

In no century was this view so prevalent as in 
the Eighteenth Century. Almost all the little 
manuals on Education that found acceptance rule 
out certain subjects as unsuited for feminine study 
— the classical languages, for instance, and science. 
The object of these eliminations is the cultivation 
of feminine charm rather than, as in Moliere's time, 
the achievement of domestic efficiency. And the 
average ideal of feminine charm in the Eighteenth 
Century is, as we have already seen, a tame, cling- 



320 



FEMININE OCCUPATIONS 321 

ing, clipped sweetness, closely hedged by barriers 
of convention that shelter it from the clear blowing 
airs of heaven. We are struck by the minute 
attention paid in these treatises to propriety of 
manner, to points of etiquette, to subtleties of 
deportment. We are even more struck by the 
curious neglect of domestic training, though in this 
sphere, perhaps instinct was supposed to supersede 
study. Mrs Chapone, it is true, imparts in her 
writings a few hints on domestic economy and 
advice on the right management of servants ; but 
this is a somewhat limited description of the whole 
duty of domestic woman. No doubt it would have 
been considered a little indelicate to give instruction 
on such subjects as sick-nursing or the care of 
babies. As a matter of fact, the babies of the upper 
classes were usually farmed out in this century, 
and, indeed, there does not seem much evidence to 
prove that domestic administration was peculiarly 
efficient, even when stimulated by a wholesome 
ignorance of books. 

How does domestic efficiency stand when com- 
bined with a knowledge of books and languages ? 
What manner of housewives were the Blue-Stock- 
ings ? How far were they familiar with domestic 
management — with cookery ? What proficiency 
had they in needlework ? Did they give them- 
selves at all to that one interest sometimes allowed 
the domestic woman outside her home, the care of 
the poor ? These are questions that require honest 

21 



322 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

examination, because a still undecided problem is 
concerned in the answer. 

The Blue-Stockings were not all exact economists; 
they were not all judicious mistresses ; they were 
not all exquisite needlewomen. Temperament and 
circumstance : these affect the lives of the learned 
and the unlearned alike. Practical Mrs Handcocks 
are always needed to supplement the idealistic 
nature of a Mrs Vesey ; kind Betty Mores may 
always save their sisters experience in domestic 
affairs until it is too late to learn ; and there are 
sometimes Thrales, so anxious for their wives to 
cultivate the intellect that they will not allow them 
any control over the kitchen or the larder. When 
there are short-comings for such causes as these, it 
is not fair to lay the blame upon books. What we 
have to inquire is : Did study interfere with the 
performance of domestic duty.f^ Was any claim 
sacrificed for the sake of self-expression or self- 
cultivation ? Was the household administration of 
a Blue-Stocking inferior to that of an unlettered 
woman ? 

We glance back upon the lives we have been 
considering, and the answer is not uncertain. 
Fanny Burney wrote Evelina at odd moments 
snatched from her very arduous labours as amanu- 
ensis to her father. Elizabeth Carter translated 
Epictetus in the intervals of preparing her step- 
brother for the University. Mrs Montagu was a 
notable housewife with an intimate knowledo^e of 



FEMININE OCCUPATIONS 323 

every department, and administered her domestic 
affairs as capably as her estates. Fanny Burney, 
in prospect of her marriage, drew up a forecast of 
expenses, and managed to live with her husband 
and baby while she was writing Camilla on some- 
thing like ;^i20 a year. Mrs Carter was an ex- 
cellent cook ; Dr Johnson's saying should be taken 
as a motto by the Blue- Stockings of the future : 
" My old friend, Mrs Carter, can make a pudding 
as well as translate Epictetus, and work a handker- 
chief as well as compose a poem." Neither among 
other domestic and literary interests was needle- 
work neglected — such plain needlework as occu- 
pied Mrs Carter with the making of twelve shirts, 
instead of writing the life of Epictetus, as Arch- 
bishop Seeker suggested ; such endless dressmaking 
and alteration as consumed so much of Fanny 
Burney's valuable time ; such elaborate fancy-work 
as resulted in Mrs Montagu's feather-hangings and 
in Mrs Delany's various and delicate triumphs. 
Dr Johnson considered plain needlework to be 
"one of the greatest felicities of female life," con- 
tributing to woman's amusement, to her sanity, to 
her length of days. He was much struck by a re- 
mark once made to him by a lady : "A man cannot 
hem a pocket handkerchief, and so he runs mad." 

The case of fancy-work is a little different. In 
the past century fancy-work and amateur work 
generally fell upon evil days. This was, no doubt, 
partly owing to the idea that knowledge was 



324 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

unfeminine, and consequently that any production 
revealing study or exactitude savoured of the 
pedant. A spurious feminine apparatus was there- 
fore invented, chiefly, heaven be praised, of perish- 
able material, such as bread, paper, paste-board, 
twigs of trees. But to this day, in remote country 
lodgings we find preserved under glass covers wax 
fruits that set the teeth on edge and foolish 
samplers that must have worn out the patience and 
the eyes of our great-grandmothers. In Mrs 
Delany's time, however, the tradition that had 
come down out of the past was not quite dead. 
Ladies no longer worked elaborate pieces of 
tapestry full of movement and emotion, but needle- 
work was still a part of daily life, still made the 
refinement of decoration, both of the person and of 
the home. To this ideal we are returning, with 
our hand-embroidered dresses and cloaks and 
curtains ; and much of the artistic craftsmanship of 
our day would seem to derive back directly to Mrs 
Delany. We read, for instance, of a set of covers 
made for chairs, of linen of a brilliant dark blue, 
for which Mrs Delany designed a beautiful pattern 
of oak leaves cut out in white linen and attached 
down with different sorts of white knotting which 
also formed the veining and stalks. Bed-spreads 
too, she worked on the same model. This recalls 
the appliqu^ work done in many of the pleasant 
hand-factories of the present time. Mrs Delany 
also worked backs and seats for chairs in worsted 



FEMININE OCCUPATIONS 325 

chenille representing groups of flowers or birds 
copied from nature. ** I have worked Caton (a 
jonquil parroquet) in the back of one of the 
chenille chairs I am doing for the Duchess in the 
midst of purple astres which sets off his golden 
plumage to admiration,'" 

And now to turn to '' woman's sphere " outside the 
home. To-day the question of charity has become 
an exceedingly difficult one. Specialists who have 
studied the conditions condemn indiscriminate 
giving as a mere sop to one's own conscience, 
calculated in the long run to create the class it 
would relieve. Classification has divided the poor 
into the unemployed, the can't-works, and the won't- 
works, each class requiring separate and different 
treatment. The question is now one of agonising 
complication, and the palliatives merely experi- 
mental ; public opinion is not yet roused to vigorous 
action — to that sacrifice of leisure by every com- 
petent individual in some united scheme, which is 
the only thorough way of coping with the evil. 

In the Eighteenth Century there is but little 
consciousness of the social problem. Dr Johnson, 
indeed, is never tired of inveighing against those 
who indulge in imaginary sorrows when there is so 
much real sorrow in the world ; and in a very prac- 
tical way he did what he could to relieve this. Also 
he made the test for a civilisation, not the position 
of its women — the usual test — but the provision for 
its poor. *' Gentlemen of education," he observed, 



326 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

** were pretty much the same in all countries ; the 
condition of the lower orders, the poor especially, 
was the true mark of national discrimination." 
But poverty and social injustice and social wrong 
were generally accepted as necessary evils, and not 
regarded in any sense as problems demanding 
scientific investigation and capable, perhaps, of 
radical amelioration. 

Among the Blue-Stocking ladies who concerned 
themselves most actively with charity were Mrs 
Montagu, Mrs Carter, and Mrs More. 

Mrs Montagu was the Lady Bountiful on a 
grand scale, the kind Patroness, the dispenser of 
gifts from above. Indeed, her charities were con- 
sidered by some of her contemporaries, a little too 
evident, though Dr Johnson defends her against 
this accusation : '* I have seen no beings who do as 
much good from benevolence as she does from 
whatever motive . . . No, Sir, to act from pure 
benevolence is not possible for finite beings, human 
benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or 
some other motive." 

It was on her estates in Northumberland that 
she bestowed her bounties most freely. She had 
been accustomed on her arrival to give her colliery 
people a feast, but, as the good souls, men and 
women, used to get very drunk, she contented 
herself instead with killing a fat beast once a 
week and sending to each family a piece of meat. 
She would have the boys and girls to supper in 



FEMININE OCCUPATIONS 327 

batches — fifty-nine at a time — giving them rice 
pudding and boiled beef, the expense, as she writes 
to her sister-in-law, not being great, as rice is cheap 
and skimmed milk and coarse beef served the 
occasion. Clothes she gives, too, when the 
families are large, and she proposes, if things con- 
tinue to thrive, to establish spinning, knitting and 
sewing schools for the girls. Benefits of this sort, 
she amusingly admits, ''and a general kind 
behaviour give a good deal of advantage to the 
coal owners as well as to the colliers." 

But the charitable action that most struck the 
imagination of her time and that is noticed in 
the obituary notice of the Ge^itleman s Magazine 
as her only claim to remembrance is the feast 
that she gave to the chimney sweepers every 
May-day on the lawn in front of her house in 
Portman Square. You remember how tenderly 
Charles Lamb speaks of these " dim specks — 
poor blots — innocent blacknesses " bidding you 
give them a penny, or better, twopence, and 
recounting how an annual supper was held for 
them at Smithfield on St Bartholomew's day, 
consisting of sausages and small ale ; a ceremony 
which Mrs Montagu royally anticipated. No 
question, you see, of stopping the tyranny and 
torture ; but in the year, one delightful hour's 
alleviation. Tradition has it that Mrs Montagu's 
attention was drawn to the hard life of the little 
chimney-sweeps owing to the kidnapping by 



328 FAMOUS BLUE STOCKINGS 

master sweeps of a boy-relative of her husband's, 
afterwards recovered ; possibly Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu's son, whose subsequent erratic career 
was mere suited to the times of Haroun al 
Raschid than to the unad venturous Eighteenth 
Century. Hannah More is bidden to Mrs 
Montagu's feast ; preoccupied with the horrors of 
the slave trade, she says she will come unless 
she attends a feast of ''free negroes" instead. 
Madame d'Arblay, in her Memoirs of Dr Burney 
gives an account of this May-day festival. It 
is the subject on which we can least forgive the 
insincerity of her Johnsonese ; though, indeed, 
the style is too comic to offend seriously. ** Not 
all the lyrics of all the rhymsters, nor all the 
warblings of all the spring-feathered choristers, 
could hail the opening smiles of May like the 
fragrance of that roasted beef and the pulpy 
softness of those puddings of plums with which 
Mrs Montagu yearly renovated those sooty little 
agents to the safety of our most blessing luxury." 

This lavish giving is part of the love of display 
in Mrs Montagu's character — not gaudy or vulgar, 
but rather aesthetic — she loved a striking coup 
d'ceil — a scenic effect — backgrounds of magnifi- 
cence and foregrounds of contrast. To quote 
Madame d'Arblay again : "Not to vain glory, 
then, but to kindness of heart, should be adjudged 
the publicity of that superb charity which made 
its jetty objects for one bright morning cease 




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FEMININE OCCUPATIONS 



329 



to consider themselves as degraded outcasts of 
society." 

Undoubtedly, Mrs Montagu had a kind heart. 
But she was always the grand lady, a being 
from another sphere, descending to earth laden 
with good things, to disappear again into the 
empyrean. 

This was not the method of Hannah More, of 
Elizabeth Carter. Mrs Carter, though practising 
the charity of gifts in her native Deal, was one 
of the first in that century to recognise the value 
of investigation in a large town like London. The 
Ladies Charitable Society^ to which she belonged, 
anticipated in many respects the principles of the 
Charity Organisation Society. *' At the first institu- 
tion of our Society, we wished to have afforded 
an unlimited relief; but very short experience 
convinced us that this was impracticable and we 
were obliged to restrain it to five parishes. Yet, 
that none of the poor people might be disappointed, 
who had been encouraged to hope, all whose cases 
had been examined by the inquirers prior to this 
regulation were (unless unworthy) relieved ; and 
those to whom, from sickness, a continued relief 
was necessary, had their continued relief, though 
out of the limits, long after the order was passed." 
The Books of the Society were open to subscribers. 
This first attempt at organisation was fraught with 
difficulty and disappointment, but it marks a great 
advance in the way of looking at the subject. Mrs 



330 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

Carter's common-sense stood her in good stead, 
lacking a knowledge of political economy. There 
is an interesting passage in a letter of hers 
to Mrs Vesey on the question whether Mrs 
Vesey was justified in spending money upon 
herself by purchasing a carriage. *' In general, 
no doubt, the best relief to the poor is from 
supplying their wants by the means of their own 
honest labour : and, therefore, your plans in the 
cabriole are not to be ranked among the vices of 
useless luxury. They only become so, I apprehend, 
when by too great an expense in employing those 
who can work, there is not enough reserved for 
the relief of those who from various innocent 
inabilities, cannot. It must be confessed, there 
must always be a danger of mistake, when the 
benefit arising to others is interwoven with the 
indulgence of our own fancies ; and, perhaps, the 
only secure way of avoiding it is by a regular 
appropriation of all the several articles of expense." 
Hannah More's charities are too intimately 
bound up with her life to be easily separated 
from it, and they were so many and so various 
that we have only been able to indicate them 
briefly. The investigations of Mrs Carter's society 
were in the nature of tentative experiment. 
Hannah More's investigations were carried out 
with scientific thoroughness. She was the only 
lady of the Blue-Stocking coteries who approached 
these questions from the more modern point of 



FEMININE OCCUPATIONS 331 

view. Her energy in collecting facts and statistics, 
her fervent labours in the cause of humanity, link 
her with the Nineteenth Century ; but she retains 
her faith in the efficacy of Eighteenth Century 
methods, the finality of Eighteenth Century beliefs. 
And we may repeat that Hannah More brought 
more to the task she set herself than the organising 
brain ; she brought a heart overflowing with com- 
passion, a hand ever open and ready. 

Thus, where domestic claims existed, it would 
appear that the Blue- Stockings met them with 
heart-whole devotion ; where domestic occupations 
required performing it seems that generally speak- 
ing the Blue-Stockings were admirably efficient ; 
while in trying to improve the condition of the 
unhappy, they manifested generosity, common- 
sense and self-sacrifice. Their writings and their 
entertainments are not their only — not their chief 
— claim upon our interest and our sympathies ; it 
is the throbbing woman underneath that gives value 
to their wit and their learning. 



CONCLUSION 

A S we look back into that blue haze of the 
-^"^ past, which for a brief while superseded 
the speckled black and red of the card-table, we 
pause to wonder if it were a mere transient 
exhalation, or if it fostered conditions that were 
to help forward the intellectual development of 
women, their independence, their position in the 
eyes of the world and their claims for greater 
opportunities. 

Women had been famous scholars before the 
Eighteenth Century, but in England they had 
done very little in literature. An odd memoir 
or two, a tiny treatise on hawking or on the 
religious life, a ballad, a song — these had been 
their contributions — stray leaves that drifted almost 
accidentally into the great domain of literature. 
In the Eighteenth Century, quietly, unobtrusively, 
women began to remove the barriers from that 
field. The Blue-Stockings entered upon it almost 
in a body, taking possession of different allotments ; 
we have Fanny Burney's Novels, Mrs Chapone's 
Letters, Mrs Montagu's Essay, Mrs Carter's 
Translation, Mrs Thrale's Anecdotes and the 
multifarious prose and verse of Hannah More. 

332 



CONCLUSION 333 

Outside the inmost circle we find Mrs Lenox ; Mrs 
Macaulay, the author of the History of England 
from the Accession of the Stuarts — an able piece 
of work that won the praise of Lecky ; Mrs 
Barbauld and Miss Seward, both poetesses ; Mrs 
Trimmer, author of the History of the Robins ; 
Joanna Baillie ; Mrs Radcliffe ; — to name no 
others. This is a remarkable record for women, 
who, though most of them would have disowned 
the title, were nevertheless pioneers. Thus, by 
their number, the Blue-Stockings accustomed the 
general public to the idea of women writing ; by 
their achievements they asserted their right to a 
place within the gates of literature ; by their 
success they prepared a way for those who were 
to follow. They won territory for woman's 
intellectual advance ; they made breathing- 
space for the genius that was to develop 
into the supreme expression of the Sonnets 
from the Portuguese and the lyrics of Christina 
Rossetti. 

With regard to their personal independence, 
we have already seen that the Blue- Stockings, 
while neglecting no social or domestic duty, were 
able to shape their own lives to original aims, to 
cultivate their individual gifts, and to put their 
theories in action. Elizabeth Carter and Hannah 
More are, indeed, typical of the independent 
woman ; Elizabeth Carter with her fearless delight 
in nature, her passion for lonely walks, her solitary 



334 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 

meals of cake and tea ; Hannah More with her 
intense convictions, her insatiable energy, driving 
about the country, putting up at odd taverns and 
finally forced to deny the one authority to which 
she had always bowed, the clergyman. Further- 
more, both these ladies won economic independ- 
ence, earning a competence by means of the pen. 
Then four of our Blue-Stockings made more or 
less unconventional marriages ; Hester Mulso and 
Fanny Burney ; Mrs Pendarves and Mrs Thrale 
when they married a second time. Mrs Montagu 
and Mrs Vesey possessed individuality of a marked 
character. 

But while the Blue-Stockings, by their achieve- 
ments, demonstrated their intellectual, social and 
philanthropic capacities and in their lives asserted 
their independence, their initiative, their belief in 
self-development ; they made no open claim for 
equality, mental, moral, or political. They stood 
apart from those who advocated directly and 
specifically, the doctrine of woman's advancement. 

So early as 1673 we find a protest in an 
Essay on Education against the tendency to *^ breed 
women low." So early as 1694 we have Mrs 
Mary Astell's proposal for the foundation of a 
College for the higher education of women. Mrs 
Mary Astell is the pioneer of the Woman's 
movement in the modern sense of the word — 
the first to point out that if girls are worse 
educated than boys it is unreasonable to com- 



CONCLUSION 335 

plain that women are more uneducated than 
men. Mrs Astell was a woman of exemplary 
life, a profound scholar, a devout Christian and 
deeply read in theology. She wrote an Essay 
in Defence of the Female Sex (1706) and many 
fiery little tracts which we fancy smouldered 
very quickly to ashes in that uncongenial air. 
She worshipped Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 
as a living proof of woman's genius. Lady Mary 
herself believed in the higher education of women, 
but chiefly as a resource for their leisure, as a 
contribution to their delight in life. "" I think it 
the highest injustice to be debarred the entertain- 
ment of my closet and that the same studies which 
raise the character of a man should hurt that of a 
woman." " Ignorance," she says in another place, 
*'is as much the fortress of vice as idleness, and, 
indeed, generally produces it." But, unlike Mrs 
Astell, she was emphatic, as we have already 
stated, about the necessity for concealing all traces 
of learning — a possession which, if suspected, 
would be fatal to social success. — At the end of 
the Eighteenth Century, we have another and a 
different Mary, Mary Wollstonecraft, whose Rights 
of Women, temperate as it appears to-day, aroused 
a very whirlwind of abuse. Horace Walpole was 
only voicing the general opinion when he called 
the author by the cruel name of a " hyena in 
petticoats." 

No such tempest ever disturbed the cerulean 



336 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

community of Blue-Stockings. To Mrs Delany, 
to Mrs Montagu, the Eighteenth Century conven- 
tions were second nature. Fanny Burney strove 
eagerly to shape herself to them in minutest 
exactitude, and Mrs Chapone, after a weak 
resistance, bowed to them in their entirety. 
Within the inner Blue-Stocking bounds the 
established order reigned supreme, the accepted 
decorum, the approved propriety ; its members 
moved and spoke as the standards of the time 
dictated. 

And, contradictory as it may sound, the Blue- 
Stocking movement owes its influence largely to 
its regard for convention. Because they did not 
by the least shadow transgress custom in their 
social relations, because they conformed externally 
to the somewhat narrow idea of woman in that 
age, the Blue-Stockings were allowed liberty to 
write and study and think much as they pleased. 
The world, fashionable and intellectual, flocked 
to their assemblies ; no dangerous opinions 
frightened it away, no wild and deplorable 
theories. Inevitably, the wit and learning of 
the Blue- Stockings began to impress, without 
alarming, their guests. Insensibly, men began 
to realise that charm was not incompatible with 
developed quickness of parts, with wide reading, 
with happy allusion ; that knowledge need not 
be accompanied by pedantry, and that success in 
novel writing might add no m.ore than a delicate 



CONCLUSION 



337 



zest to the writer's vivacity. Dr Johnson, 
Walpole, Burke, gave their ardent praise without 
arrtere pens^e to women in whom learning has 
added a lustre to the intellect and a tenderness 
to the heart. And it is no small thing in 
such a century as the Eighteenth Century for 
women of wit and knowledge and initiative 
to have attained so large a measure of respect 
and recognition. The Blue-Stocking move- 
ment undoubtedly helped to establish the posi- 
tion of the learned woman in the eyes of the 
world. 

But though the Blue-Stockings were, generally 
speaking, so far creatures of their age as to 
deprecate the public pressing, or even the public 
expression of unconventional views ; yet, being 
women of profound common sense it was inevit- 
able that they should be aware of certain dis- 
abilities bearing hardly upon their sex. The 
learning of Mrs Carter enabled her to point out 
to Archbishop Seeker, that the translators of the 
First Epistle to the Corinthians had been guilty 
of a false translation for the purpose of supporting 
the superiority of the husband. The wisdom of 
Mrs Delany condemned the practice of judging 
men and women by different standards of morality. 
Hester Mulso is indignant at the contemptuous 
way in which The Rambler speaks of her sex ; in 
a word, most of the Blue- Stockings recognised the 
existence of inequalities and injustices as between 



22 



338 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 

women and men. They recognised the existence 
of these inequaHties and injustices ; that is their 
sole contribution to the movement for *' women's 
rights." But this is a contribution, and a contribu- 
tion of importance. The thought that was to 
animate the future existed in germ ; and to-day 
we can hardly venture to ignore the power of 
thought as a shaper of events. 

We have endeavoured to show briefly, how fat 
the Blue-Stocking movement helped to forward 
the intellectual development of women, their in- 
dependence, their position in the eyes of the world, 
and their claims for greater opportunities. 

But it is not as preparers of the way, nor as 
givers of impetus, nor as remote influences on the 
present that we would take leave of the Blue- 
Stockings. This removes them too far into the 
sphere of abstract generalisation, and farewells are 
human things with warm hand-clasps and grateful 
words. The Blue- Stockings were generous in 
giving the best of themselves to their contem- 
poraries, and to us also, who have striven however 
imperfectly to live back into their time, they have 
been ready to offer their brilliant hospitality, their 
sensible advice, their wise counsel. They seem 
very close to us in some respects ; the interval of 
over a century has made no serious gap in thought 
between us ; we understand them, and they would 
probably understand us. So we clasp hands across 
the years, and part with regret from the kindly 



CONCLUSION 339 

companionship of these women, who lent to the 
name of Blue-Stocking a lustre dimmed afterwards 
by false implication, — a lustre which the present day- 
may yet see restored to something of its ancient 
glory. 



INDEX 



Addison, Joseph, as a moralist, 5, 307 

condemns formal gardens, 287 
Adam, Robert, 54, 218 
Andover, Vicountess, 153 
Anecdotes of Paintings Horace Wal- 

pole's, 80 
Anecdotes of Dr Johnson, Mrs Thrale's, 

117, 133, 228, 332 
Astell, Mary, her lines to Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, 283 
her tracts, 283 
her pioneer work, 334 
her writings, 335 
Austen, Jane, 223, 242 

Baillie, Joanna, 282, 333 

Baltimore, Lord, 90 

Banks, Sir Joseph, 80 

Barbauld, Mrs, on the absurdities of 

fashion, 4 
on Richardson's "flower-garden" 

of ladies, 191 
on Mrs Chapone's marriage, 200 
a poetess, 333 
Barclay, Mr, 131, 132 
Barley Wood, 300, 301, 307, 318 
Barry, James, 58, 218, 220 
Bas Bleu, Hannah More's, 22, 27, 63, 

64. 75, n, 105, 107, 146, 148, 

150, 158, 174, 178, 185, 246, 289, 

2955 299, 302 
Bath, Earl of, 28, 56, 57, 64, 65, 71, 

279, 281 
Batheaston, 256, 258, 259, 261, 262 
Beattie, James, on Johnson's jealousy, 

59 

on Edward Montagu, 276 
Bishop Bonner's Ghost, Hannah More's, 

280 
Bhie-Stocking, life-history, 16 

its precursors, "wit" and "wit- 
ling," 19, 20 

implies unconventional dress, 21 

the Stillingfleet derivation, 21 

ts first mention, 21 

its inventors, 21 



Blue-Stocking, views of Mrs Carter and 
Mrs More, 22 
origin suggested by Lady Crewe, 23 
term used for men as well as 

women, 23 
various plays upon the word, 24 
first connection with pedantry, 25 
Boscawen, Hon. Mrs, in ^(fra/o? verses, 
II 
importance as Blue - Stocking 

hostess, ?26, 254 
Mrs Montagu's letter to her, 35 
her description of Mrs Montagu, 50 
in Bas Bleu, 64 
Boswell's tribute to her, 65 
Seyisibility addressed to her, 65, 66 
at Mrs Garrick's dinner-party, 251 
Boswell, James, on origin of term 
"Blue-Stocking," 21 
his description of Mrs Boscawen, 

65 
his description of Mrs Thrale, 118 
his description of Thrale, 121 
his views on birth, irade, and 

wealth, 121, 130 
calls himself as Johnsonian as Mrs 

Thrale, 129 
description of Johnson's conversa- 
tion, 129, 145 
accuses Mrs Thrale of inaccuracy, 

134. 305 
thinks enmity against Mrs Thrale 

carried too far, 137 
his portrait in Rowlandson's cari- 
cature, 217 
depicts a Fleet Street Dr Johnson, 

228 
on Mrs Garrick's dinner-party, 251 
his belief in influence of the dead, 
277 
Botanic Garden, The, Erasmus 

Darwin's, 81, 260, 289 
British Synonymy , Mrs Piozzi's, 140 
Brown, "Capability," 76, 295, 296 
Bulstrode (Bucks) its bathing-tubs out 
of order, 69 

34» 



342 FAMOUS BLUESTOCKINGS 



Bulstrode (Bucks), Horace Walpole's 
description of, loo 
Mrs Delany meets King and Queen 

there, loi 
Blue-Stocking party at, 153 
hours of meals at, 248 
Bunbury, Harry, 213 
Bunbury, Lady Sarah, 69 
Burke, Edmund, praises women of the 
age, 10 
his tribute to Mrs Montagu, 28 
enacts Hortensius in Bas Bleu, 76 
his high appreciation of Mrs 

Delany, 83 
his remark on Johnson's death, 

134 
his friendship with Mr Vesey, 170 
a phrase of his quoted by Hannah 

More, 173 
his portrait in Barry's picture, 219 
his compliments on Cecilia, 2.2,1 
Burney, Captain, 74 
Burney, Charlotte Ann, 135 
Burney, Dr, his authorship of Herald 
verses, 10 
his condemnation of Witlings, 20 
his description of "ingredients" 

for parties, 181 
his parties, 224 
his delight in Evelina, 225 
his objections to Fanny's marriage, 
241 
Burney, Fanny (Madame D'Arblay), her 
sensitiveness, 9 
her Cecilia, Burke's opinion, 10 
in Herald verses, 11 
her place in Johnson's Female Ad- 
ministration, 12 
called "Pretty Fanny," 13 
her Witlings, 19, 20 
disowns the name ' ' Blue-Stocking," 

25 
her descriptions of Mrs Montagu, 

48, 54 
describes meeting of Johnson and 

Mrs Montagu after quarrel, 61 
her complexion, 67 68 
her appearance and dress, 74, 226, 

227 
introduced to Mrs Delany, 103, 232 
attracted by Madame de Genlis and 

Madame de Stael, 115, 240 
her descriptions of Mrs Thrale, 118, 

139 
reports Mrs Thrale s admiration 

forjohnson, 129 
her opinion of Miss Thrale, 135 



Burney, Fanny (D'Arblay), on Mrs 
Thrale's second marriage, 137 

on Mrs Chapone's parties, 153, 
208 

her account of Mrs Vesey, 166 

on Mrs Vesey's loss, 176 

on Mrs Montagu's "Circle" 
method, 182 

on Mrs Vesey's "disintegration" 
method, 185 

on the "square," 187 

her description of Mrs Chapone, 
192 

her characteristics caught by Sir 
Joshua, 212 

visions herself in caricature, 213 

her happiness in success of 
Evelina, 222 

its appeal, 223 

her instinct for writing, 224 

anonymous appearance of Evelina, 
225 

her description of its triumph, 226 

her " modesty," 226 

her first visit to the Thrale's, 227 

importance of her account of John- 
son, 228 

her friendship with Johnson, 229, 
230 

her literary and social success, 231, 
302 

appointed Bed-Chamber woman, 
232 

her life summarized, 233 

her egoism, 234 

her life at Court, 234 

her over-sensitiveness, 235 

her duties, 236 

her description of the King's mad- 
ness, 236, 237 

her visit to Norbury Park, 239 

her marriage and early married 
life, 241 

builds Camilla Cottage, 242 

her residence abroad, 243 

her old age, 244 

her Memoirs of Dr Burney, 244 

on Mrs Montagu's breakfast- 
parties, 250, 251 

her description of Lady Miller, 

257 
on Mrs Carter, 276, 280, 281 
her garden, 296, 297 
her domestic economy, 323 
her account of the chimney- 
sweeper feasts, 328 
Bute, Lady, 181, 216, 217 



INDEX 



343 



Cambridge, Mr, 60 

Camilla, Fanny Burney's, 233, 234, 

242, 296, 323 
Campbell, Rev. Dr Thomas, 127 
Carolan (Irish Bard), 99 
Carter, Elizabeth, her strictures on 
public pleasure-gardens, 3 
her censure of the " macaroni 

gentlemen," 4 
her sympathy, 9 
in Herald verses, 11 
her place in Female Administra- 
tion, 12 
called "Sappho," 13 
views on origin of term Blue- 
Stocking^ 22 
friendship with the Earl of Bath, 

57 
on character of Lord Lyttleton, 59 
in Bas Bleu, 64, 65 
in Sensibility, 66 
her appearance and dress, 71 
her favourite author, 88, 190 
on Mrs Thrale's second marriage, 

137 
desires Lord Orford to put down 

Faro, 147 
her opinion on cards, 148 
on Mrs Vesey's imagination, 160 
singularity of her friendships, 161 
her sympathy with Mrs Vesey, 162 
and with Mrs Vesey's country, 163 
her account of the Irish beggar, 

163 
and of Mrs Vesey's unpracticality, 

165 
and of her childishness, 167 
on Mr Vesey's character, 171 
and on his architectural vagaries, 

171 
her description of Mrs Handcock, 

^73 
on Mrs Vesey's loss, 176 
contributor to Rainbler, 190, 278 
her character, 263 
her learning, 263, 264 
her early writings, 264 
her early fame, 265 
her absence of pedantry, 265 
her domestic occupations, 266, 323 
her diffidence, 267 
her simplicity of character, 267 
her humour, 268 
her family relationships, 269 
her views concerning love, 271 
her independence, 271 
her love of walking, 272 



Carter, Elizabeth, her appreciation of 
nature, 273 
her house at Deal, 273 
her translation of Epictetus, 274, 

275 
her sympathy with his philosophy, 

27s 
her piety, 276, 306 
her letters on religious difficulties, 

277 
her friends, 278-280 
her poems, 279 
her tolerance, 280 
her adventurous spirit, 281 
her attitude on the woman-question, 

282, 283 
her introductions to Royalty, 284 
on Mrs Vesey at Lucan, 294 
her garden, 296 
her charity, 329 
her belief in investigating cases, 

329 
her political economy, 330 
the independent woman, 333 
Carter, Rev. Nicolas, 266, 269, 278 
Cave, Edward, 265 
Cecilia, Fanny Burney's, 10, 126, 229, 

331, 232 
Chapone, Mr, 76, 196, 200 
Chapone, Mrs (Hester Mulso), her 
" uncommon good sense," 9 
in Herald verses, 11 
her method of memorizing, 11 
her place in Female Administra- 
tion, 12 
her Simplicity recommended, 50 
her place in Se?isibility, 66 
her appearance and dress, 73, 192 
Mrs Delany's opinion on the 

Letters, 88 
her letter to Mrs Delany, loi 
introduces Fanny Burney to Mrs 

Delany, 103 
her criticism of Mrs ThroXc's Anec- 
dotes, 133 
attacks card-parties in Rambler, 

146 
her later opinion on card-playing, 

148 
her Essay on Conversation, 151, 

152 
her connection with Rambler, 189 
her independence of mind, 190 
her emotional temperament, 191 
her artistic susceptibility, 191 
her enthusiasm for genius, 191 
her ugliness, 193 



344 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 



Chapone, Mrs (Hester Mulso), her 
character, 193 
her birth and early life, 193 
her friendship with Richardson, 

193 
her disputations, 194 
her defence of Clarissa, 195 
her Matrimonial Creed, 196, 197 
her opinion of Sir Charles Gra7idi- 

S071, 198 

as Richardson's model, 199 
her marriage, 200 
her widowhood, 201 
her Letters : their success, 201 
her Letters compared with Chester- 
field's, 203 
their religious teaching, 204, 306 
their teaching on the emotions, 

20s 
the curriculum they embrace, 206, 

207 
her claim to title of ' ' Blue-Stock- 
ing," 208 
her reported praise of Cecilia, 231 
on domestic economy, 321 
Charlotte, Queen, presented with a 
spinning-wheel, 85 
her affection for Mrs Delany, 102, 

103 
as described in Fanny Burney's 

Diary, 236 
her lunch at Bulstrode, 249 
her interest in Mrs Carter, 283 
Chateaubriand, 239, 243 
Chatham, Lord, 157 
Chesterfield, Lord, 202, 203 
Cholmondeley, Mrs (Blue-Stocking 
hostess), her disintegration of 
Circle, 186, 255 
her female dinner-party, 252 
Clarissa Harlowe, Richardson's, 40, 

191, 194, 265 
Clayton, Mrs, 91 
Ccelohs in search of a Wife, Hannah 

More's, 309 
Confessions, Rousseau's, 88 
Cork, Countess of, see Monckton, Miss 
Cowley, Abraham, 270, 289 
Cowper, William, his religious melan- 
choly, 7, 306 
his opinion on Mrs Montagu s 

Essay, 46 
his lines on Mrs Montagu's 
Feather-Room, 53 
Cowslip Green, 300, 301, 318 
Crewe, Lady (Blue-Stocking hostess) in 
Herald versus, 11 



Crewe, Lady (Blue-Stocking hostess),on 
origin of term Blue-Stocking, 23 
Sheridan's dedication to her, 255 
her entertainments at Crewe Hall, 
256, 259 
Crisp, Mr (of Chessington), 20, 224, 226, 
227 

D'Arblay, Madame, see Burney, 

Fanny 
D'Arblay, Monsieur, 75, 233, 240, 241, 

242, 243, 288, 296, 297 
Darwin, Erasmus, and Mrs Delany, 81 

member of Lichfield coterie, 260 

his "delicious" poem, 289 
Day, Thomas, 260 
De la Fert^-Imbault, Madame, 256 
De I'Epinay, Madame, 113 
De I'Espinasse, Mademoiselle, 113, 115 
De Genlis, Madame, her connection 
with Fanny Burney, 115, 240 

her educational methods, 204, 207, 
208 
Delany, Dr, 75 

his account of Mrs Delany's first 
marriage, 89 

his second marriage, 94 

Mrs Montagu's account of him, 95 

his "portrait" of Maria," 96 

his defence of Swift, 97 

his death, 99 

his laying-out of Deville, 293 
Delany, Mrs (Mary Granville) 

inveighs against follies of fashion, 4 

her charm, 9, 82-84 

called "old wit," 19 

her comment on Room of Cupidons, 

5° 
in Sensibility, 66 

her complexion, 67, 68 

her appearance and dress, 72, 73 

her advocacy of strange drugs, 72 

her paper-mosaics, 78-81 

pen-pictures of her, 82, 83 

her practice of feminine arts, 84, 85 

her worship of Propriety, 86 

her criticism of men and manners, 

87 
her opinion of Rousseau, 88 
her marriage with Mr Pendarves, 

89 
her other admirers, 90 
her visit to Ireland, 91 
her description of Dean Swift, 92, 

93 
her correspondence with Dean 
Swift, 93 



INDEX 



345 



Delany, Mrs (Mary Granville), her 
marriage with Dr Delany, 94 
his " portrait " of her, 96 
her description of Ireland, 98 
her interest in Irish Industries, 98 
her interest in Irish music, 99 
her widowhood, 99 
her entertainments, 100 
her wit and learning, loi 
her friendship with the King and 

Queen, 102, 103 
presented by them with a house, 

103 
her meeting with Fanny Burney, 103 
her attitude towards Royalty, 104 
on sex-inequalities, 114, 337 
her strictures on Blue-Stocking 

conversation, 153 
her ideal of conversation, 154 
her description of an assembly, 181 
on Mrs Chapone's allowance, 201 
and on her Letters, 88, 201 
her opinion on Chesterfield's 

Letters, 202 
her relations with Hogarth, 215 
her artistic gifts, 216 
her portrait by Opie, 216 
her reported praise of Cecilia, 231 
her entertainment of Handel, 246 
her hours for meals in Ireland, 249 
her account of King and Queen at 

Bulstrode, 249 
her visit to the Garricks, 290 
her description of a grotto, 291 
her breakfast in the garden, 294 
her tribute to Mrs Garrick, 303 
her needlework, 324 

Delville (near Dublin), 94, 95, 293 

De Narbonne, Comte, 242 

De Polignac, Madame (wears blue 
stockings) 23 

De Stael, Madame, 115, 239, 240 

Dewes, Mrs., 196 

Dialogues of the Dead {"Lord Lyttleton's 
and Mrs Montagu's), 38, 39, 46, 
47. 60 

Diary, Fanny Burney's, 192, 226, 236, 244 

Donnellan, Mrs, 82 

description of Mrs Delany, 83 
goes to Ireland with Mrs Delany, 

91 
her opinion of Miss Mulso, 199 
her fault-finding with Sir Charles 
Grandison, 200 
Dorset, Duke of, 253 
Du Bocage, Madame, 249, 250 
Du Deffand, Madame, 113, 115 



Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, 12 

Edgeworth, Maria, 202, 242 
Emile, Rousseau's, 204, 209 
English Garde?i, The (Mason's), 76, 

289, 290, 292 
Epictetus, Mrs Carter's translation of, 

263, 273, 274, 27s, 322, 323 
Essay in Defence of the Female Sex^ 

Mrs Anstell's, 335 
Essay on Shakespeare, Mrs Montagu's 

38, 41-46, 58, 270, 332 
Essay on Taste, Miss Reynolds', 212 
Evelina, Fanny Burney's, 74, 222, 223, 

225, 229, 232, 239, 245, 322 

"Feast of Shells," 252 
Female Quixote, 10 
Feminiad, 12 

Flora, Mrs Delany's, 78, 80, 81 
Foundling Hospital, 6 
Friend, William, 34, 51 

Galway, Lady, 24, 255 
Garrick, David, enacts Roscius in Bas 
Bleu, 76 

his intimacy with the Burney's, 224 

his " Temple," 291 

his friendship with Hannah More, 

303. 304 
Garrick, Mrs, her dinner-parties, de- 
scribed byBoswell, 10,251 
Mrs Delany's appreciation of, 303 
her friendship with Hannah More, 

303. 304 
Gentlemen' s Magazine, 264, 327 
Geoffrin, Madame, iii, 113, 256 
George III., his attentions to Mrs 
Delany, loi 
his request for Handel's MS, 

music, 102 
his patronage of Opie, 216 
as described in Fanny Burney's 

Diary, 236, 237 
and "Capability" Brown, 295 
Godschall, Mr and Mrs, 19 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 217 
Grandison, Sir Charles, Richardson's, 

73, 192, 198, 200 
Granville, Mary, see Delany, Mrs 
Gray, Thomas, 61, 76 
Greville, Fulke, 255 

Hagley Park (Worcestershire), 208, 

292 
Handcock, Mrs, 169, 172, 173, 322 
Handcock, William, 169 
Handel, 102, 246 



346 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 



Harcourt, Lord, 185, 186 

Hawkins, Letitia, 114 

Henry, Mrs, 165 

Herald Verses, 10, 11, 65, 255 

Herries, Lady (Blue-Stocking hostess), 

255 
Highmore, Miss, 73, 192, 198 
History of Engla7id from the Accession 

of the Stuarts, Mrs Macaulay's, 

333 
History of Henry II., Lord Lyttleton s, 

60, 170, 208 
History of Music, Dr Burney's, 224 
History of the Robins, Mrs Trimmer's, 

333 
Hogarth, 210, 213-215, 217 
Humanist, The, 96 
Huntingdon, Lady, 87 



Jenyns, Soame, called "old wit," 19 
meets Fanny Burney, 187, 254 
in Barry's picture, 219 
Johnson, Dr, as a moralist, 6 
his " menagerie," 6 
his periods of darkness, 7 
his opinion on women of the age, 

10 
his praise of Mrs Montagu's con- 
versation, 10, 41, 55 
his Female Administration, 12 
his tribute to Mrs Montagu, 28 
his defence of Shakespeare, 42 
his criticism of Mrs Montagu's 

Essay, 45 
his relations with Mrs Montagu, 

58, 59, 60, 61 
his appreciation of Bas Bleu, 63 
his remarks on the Irish and 

Scotch, 97 
his desire for the study of Gaelic, 

97 

as a symbol of the age, no 

his connection with the Thrales, 
119, 120, 127, 128 

accuses Mrs Thrale of the insolence 
of wealth, 122 

his outbursts controlled by Thrale, 
123 

accuses Mrs Thrale of giving ex- 
aggerated praise, 126 

his admiration for Mrs Thrale, 127 

his Latin ode to her, 128 

as executor to Thrale's will, 130, 

131 
Mrs Thrale's break with him, 132, 

133 



Johnson, Dr, halloos Burney on to 
attack Mrs Montagu, 145 
attacks card-parties in Rambler, 

146 
advises sweetmeats for parties, 147 
his later opinion on card-playing, 

148 
his remark on Mr Vesey, 170 
his contributors to Rambler, 190 
his behaviour to Mrs Williams, 

193 
his opinion on Chesterfield's Letters, 

202 
his portrait in Rowlandson's cari- 
cature, 217 
his portrait in Barry's picture, 219, 

220 
his admiration for Dr Burney, 

224 
his description of Fanny Burney's 

modesty, 225 
his friendship for Fanny Burney, 

229, 230 
his exuberance of spirits, 229 
on Tea, 254 
his disapproval of Lady Miller's 

parties, 257 
his Ode to Mrs Carter, 265 
his tribute to Mrs Carter's cooking, 

266, 323 
his belief in influence of the dead, 

277 
his religous temperament, 278 
his mind compared to a garden, 

295 
his.fiiendship with Hannah More, 

305, 306 
objects to her reading Port- 
Royalists, 307 

his opinion on needlework, 323 
his test of civilization, 325 
on Mrs Montagu's benevolence, 
326 
Juniper Hall, 233, 238, 239 

Kauffman, Angelica, 53, 218 

"Lactilla," 315 

Ladies' Charitable Society, 329 

" Lady's Last Stake, The," Hogarth's, 

214, 215 
Lansdowne, Lord and Lady, 89 
Lenox, Mrs, 10, 333 
Letters oji England, Holland, and Italy, 

Madame du Bocage's, 249 
Letters on Filial Obedience, Mrs 

Chapone's, 194, 195, 196 



INDEX 



347 



Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, 

Mrs Chapone's, 88, 190, 201, 

203-208, 332 
Letters to his Son, Lord Chesterfield's, 

202, 203 
Lichfield Coterie, 259, 260, 261 
Life of Beattie, Sir WiUiam Forbes', 21 
Life of Lord Lyttleton, Dr Johnson's, 

59. 60 
Literary Magazine, 254 
Lock, ^fr and Mrs, 239 
Lucan, Lady (Blue-Stocking hostess), 

". 255 
Lucan (near Dublin), 163, 171, 294 
L)'ttleton, Lord, his tribute to Mrs 

Montagu, 28, 48 
Mrs Montagu's letters to him, 36, 

38 
his Dialogues of the Dead, 46, 60 
his description of Mrs Montagu, 48 
his friendship for Mrs Montagu, 

56, 57 
Johnson's Life of him, 60 
in Bas Bleu, 64, 65 
his acquaintanceship with Vesey, 

169 
visited by Mrs Chapone and Mrs 

Montagu, 208 
his religious con\actions, 279 
his place in Worcestershire, 292 

Macartney, Lord, 4.9 

Macaulay, Mrs, 333 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 6, 318, 

319 
Macleod, Dowager Lady, 253 
Mason, William, on Dr Johnson's and 
Mrs Montagu's quarrel, 61 
enacts Maro in Bas Bleu, 76 
his portrait in Barry's picture, 220 
his English Garden, 289, 290, 292 
Matrimonial Creed, Mrs Chapone's, 

194, 196, 197 
Max\\-ell, Dr, 59 

Memoirs of Dr Bicrney, Madame 
d'Arblay's, 137, 167, 182, 244, 
328 
Middleton, Dr. 30 

Miller, Lady (Blue-Stocking hostess), 
her vase at Batheaston, 256, 257 
her appearance, 257 
opinions on her entertainments, 258 
encourages Miss Seward, 258 
Miscellanies, Mrs Carter's, 268 
Monboddo, Lord, 68 
Monckton.^Iiss (Blue-Stocking hostess), 
24, 255 



Monsey, Dr, uses term "blue-stock- 
ings " (1756). 22 
his admiration for Mrs Montagu, 

56, 57 
character described by Mrs Mon- 
tagu, 57 
Montagu, Edward, marries Elizabeth 
Robinson, 33, 92 
his character and pursuits, 34 
admiration for his wife, 56 
his preoccupations, 75 
his view of ^Irs Carter, 276 
Montagu, Edward Wortley, 33, 91 
Montagu House, Portman Square, 
Room of Cupidons, 50 
Feather Room, 52 
Great Room, 53 

Horace Walpole's opinion of, 53 
breakfast parties at, 56, 250 
its ''quantity of air," 273 
the chimney-sweeper feasts at, 327, 
328 
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, her 
marriage, 91 
on the necessity for conceahng 

learning, 108, 335 
her \iew of man, 196 
her dail)' diet, 247 
verses prefixed to her Letters, 283 
her son kidnapped, 328 
her belief in higher education of 
women, 335 
Montagu, Mrs (Elizabeth Robinson), 
her \A\, 9 
her conversation, 10, 40, 41, 55 
in Herald \&rs&s, 11 
her place in Female Administra- 
tion, 12 
her cognomens, 13, 28 
on the Witlings, 19 
connection with origin of term 

Blue-Stocking, 22 
causes for her renown as hostess, 29 
as a child, 31 
as a girl, 31 

friendship with Duchess of Port- 
land, 32 
her early letters, 32 
her app>earance, 33 
her marriage, 33 
her temperament, 35 
her appreciation of nature, 36 
her censures on country-life, 36 
her correspondence, 37 
its prolixity, 38 

its ' ' picture^awing " facvilty, 38, 
39 



348 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 



Montagu, Mrs (Elizabeth Robinson), 
her reading, 39 
her Essay on Shakespeare , 41 
her sensitiveness to coming in- 
fluences, 42. 43 
uses comparative method, 43 
her account of the Praeternatural 

Beings, 44 
her attack on Voltaire, 45 
Johnson's opinion on the Essay, 45 
Cowper's opinion on the Essay, 46 
her three Dialogues of the Dead, 46, 

47 
contemporary descriptions of her, 

48, 49. 50 
her Room of Cupidons, 50 
her Chinese Room, 51, 250 
her Feather Room, 52, 53 
her quahties as a hostess, 54, 149 
frequenters of her assemblies, 55 
her lavish entertainment, 56 
her friendships. 56, 57 
her relations with Dr Johnson, 

58-61 
in Bas Bleu, 64 
in Sensibility, 66 
her complexion, 67 
her use of the Plunge-Bath, 68 
her appearance and dress, 71 
her descriptions of Mrs Delany, 82, 

86 
her opinion of Dr Delany, 95 
her ban on card-playing, 148 
on the " visiting tone," 151 
on subjective landscape, 157 
her opinion of Mr Vesey, 175 
her "Circle" method, 181 
described by Madame D'Arblay. 

182 
and by Lady Louisa Stuart, 183, 

184 
on Mrs Chapone's loss, 200 
her ' ' correction " of Mrs Chapone's 

Letters, 201 
her account of Mrs Delany's 

artistic gifts, 215, 216 
as a follower of fashion, 217 
painted by Sir Joshua, 218 
her portrai tin Barry's picture, 218, 

219, 220 
her breakfast-parties, 2150 
her Feast of Shells, 252 
her TM, 253 

her tribute to Mrs Carter, 266 
her absence of romance, 270 
her view of Stoicism, 275 
her annuity to Mrs Carter, 281 



Montagu, Mrs (Elizabeth Robinson), her 
descriptions of Mrs Carter, 284, 285 
her gardens, 295 
as a housewife, 322 
her needlework, 323 
as Lady Bountiful, 326, 327 
her feasts to chimney-sweepers, 29, 

327 
her love of scenic effect, 328 
Moore, Thomas, 141 
Morals, Christian, Hannah More's,3o6 
More, Elizabeth, 322 
More, Hannah, on sums lost in gamb- 
ling, 3 
inveighs against follies of fashion, 4 
as a moralist, 6 
her noble energy, 9 
in Herald verses, 10 
her place in Female Administra- 
tion, 12 
called " Saint Hannah," 13 
her tribute to Mrs Montagu, 28 
her description of Mrs Montagu, 48 
her crystallization of the Blue- 
Stocking movement, 63 
dramatis personas of her Bas Bleu, 

64. ^S, 76, 17 

dramatis personae of her Sensibility. 

65. 66 

her appearance and dress, 71 
supers in her Bas Bleu, 77 
on Mrs Delany's knowledge, loi 
the lineage of the Bas Bleu, 105 
on the making of synonyms, 140 
on the Bas Bleu assemblies, 149 
on Conversation generally, 150, 151 
on Politics in Conversation, 154, 155 
on the Society at Mrs Vesey's, 170 
her veneration for Mrs Handcock, 

173 
her account of Mrs Vesey's last 

days, 177 
her description of Bishop of St 

Asaph's assembly, 180 
her criticism of the "Circle" 

method, 184 
on the reading of Shakespeare, 206 
her description of Mrs Montagu's 

Thd, 253 
on Mrs Carter's religious views, 278 
on Sandleford, 295 
her garden, 296 
her adaptation to her age, 299 
her apparent contradictions of 

character, 300 
her intuitions and limitations, 301 
events of her life, 301 



INDEX 



349 



More, Hannah, her social success, 302 
her friendship with the Garricks, 503 
her iriendship with Horace Wal- 

pole, 304 
her friendship with Dr Johnson, 

305. 306 
as a church- woman, 306 
her views on Christianity, 307 
her activities and writings, 308, 309 
her social system, 310 
her educational work, 311 
her curriculum, 312 
her educational ideals, 313 
her persecution at Blagdon, 314, 

315 
her active benevolence, 315, 316 
her popularity and balance, 317 
her appearance, 318 
her relations with Macaulay, 319 
her importance as a force, 319 
her collection of facts and statistics, 

331 
the independent woman, 334 
More, Sarah, 305 
Mount Morris (Kent), 30, 293 
Mulso, Hester, see Chapone, Mrs 

Newton, John, 306, 318, 319 
Norbury Park, 239 
Norwich Coterie, 259, 260 

Observations made iti the course of a 
Journey through Fra?ice, Italy, 
and Germany, Mrs Piozzi's, 139 
Observations on the Conversion of St 

Paul, Lord Lyttleton's, 279 
O'Connor, Charles, 97 
Ode to Wisdom, Mrs Carter's, 265 
Opie, John, 216, 217 
Opie, Mrs, 260 

Ord, Mrs (Blue-Stocking hostess), 26 
her method of arranging guests, 

187 
her importance as hostess, 254 
Orrery, Lord, 97 

Ossian, Macpherson's, Mrs Montagu's 
admiration of, 43 

Pendarves, Mrs, see Delany, Mrs 
Pendarves, Mr, 89, 90 
Pennington, Rev. Montagu, 158, 276 
Pepys, Sir William Weller, enacts 
Loelius in Bas Bleu, 76, jj 
on the death of conversation, 155 
Percy, Earl, Hannah More's, 299, 304 
Perkins, Mr, 131, 132 
Pestalozzi, 311, 312 



Phillips, Mrs, 240 

Piety, Practical, Hannah More's, 306 

Piozzi, Mrs, see Thrale, Mrs 

Piozzi, Signor, 117. 121, 134, 135, 136, 

138, 139 
Plunge-Bath in Marylebone, 68 
Poetical Amusements at a Villa near 

Bath, 257 
Polite Conversations, Swift's, 248 
Pope, Alexander, 287, 290 
Porteous, Bishop, 308, 315 
Portland, Duchess of, Prior's verses 

about her, 32 
friendship with Mrs Montagu, 32, 

39 
as a craftswoman, 85 
friendship with Mrs Delany, 89 
visited by king and queen, loi, 249 
her reported praise of Cecilia, 231 
Prayers and Meditations, Dr John- 
son's, 6 
Prior, Matthew, 32 

Radcliffe, Mrs, 282, 333 
Raikes, Robert, 311 
Rambler, The, 146, 189, 278, 337 
Rambouillet, Hotel, 106 
Ranelagh, 220, 251 
Rape of the Lock, 67 
Rasselas, 190 
R^camier, Madame, 112 
Retrospection, Mrs Piozzi's, 140 
Reynolds, Miss, on Johnson's admira- 
tion for Mrs Thrale, 128 
on feminine passivity, 212 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, opinion on Mrs 
Montagu's Essay, 45 
admiration for Mrs Delany's Flora, 

80 
his portraits in the Streatham 

Gallery, 123 
his interpretation of the Eighteenth 

Century ideal, 211, 217 
and Fanny Burney, 212 
his portrait of Mrs Thrale, 213 
his praise of Cecilia, 231 
Richardson, Samuel, Miss Highmore's 
drawing, 73 
contributor to Rambler, 190 
given portrait of Mrs Carter, 191 
friendship for Miss Mulso, 191, 193 
his controversy with Miss Mulso, 

194 
his limitations of class, 199 
his use of Ode to Wisdom, 265 
Rights of Women, Mary Wollstone- 
craft's, 335 



350 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 



Robinson, Elizabeth, see Montagu, 

Mrs 
Robinson, Matthew, 33 
Rogers, Samuel, 244 
Roland, Madame, 112 
Rousseau, 88, 203, 209 
Rowlandson, 3, 210, 217 
Russel, Dr, 251 

St Asaphs, Bishop of, 139, i8o 
Salon, The, in Seventeenth - Century 
France, 106, 107 
in Eighteenth-Century France, 108, 

109 
in England and France contrasted, 
110-113, 115, 116 
Sandleford (Berkshire), Stillingfleet's 
visit there, 22 
Brown's improvements at, 295 
Savage, Richard, 280 
School for Scandal, 152, 255 
Schwellenberg, Mrs, 234-237 
Scott, Sir Walter, when on Island of 
Skye, 128 
and Madame d'Arblay, 226, 244 
as Miss Seward's literary executor, 

261 
on English Garden, 291 
Search after Happiness, The, Hannah 

More's, 301, 309 
Seeker, Archbishop, 266, 274, 275, 282, 

323, 337 
Sensibility, Hannah More's, 65, 66 
Seward, Miss Anna, describes Mrs 
Thrale, 124 
contributes to Batheaston Vase, 

258 
her coterie at Lichfield, 259 
her sentiment, 260 
her attitude towards life, 261 
a poetess, 333 
Seward, Mr, 192 

Sheridan, his lines on Delville, 95 
his School for Scandal, 152 
his dedication to Lady Crewe, 255 
Sketches, Moral, Hannah More's, 306 
Society of Arts, 218 
Solander, Dr, 80 

Stillingfleet, Benjamin, wears blue 
stockings, 21 
leaves off blue stockings, 22 
Streatfield, Mrs, 227 
Streatfield, Sophy, in Herald verses, 11 

Thrale enamoured of, 126 
Streatham Gallery, 123, 213 
Streatham Place, 119-121, 124, 126, 127, 
138, 229, 293-295 



Strictures on Female Education, Han- 
nah More's, 309 

Strictures on the Manners of the Great, 
Hannah More's, 6, 308 

Stuart, James (Athenian), 52 

Stuart, Lady Louisa, on Mrs Montagu's 
parties, 26 
her description of Mrs Montagu, 

49-51 
and of frequenters of Mrs Montagu's 

assemblies, 55 
and of Mrs Montagu's "Circle" 

method, 182, 183 
her mention of Blue - Stocking 

hostesses, 255 
her opinion of Mrs Carter, 267, 268 
Swift, Dean, as a Satirist, 5 

his appreciation of Mrs Delany, 

83,84 
Mrs Delany's description of him, 

92, 93 
his correspondence with her, 93, 94 
Dr Delany's defence of him, 97 
his account of a day's meal, 248 

Talbot, Miss, 161, 190, 267, 274, 275, 
280 

Temple, Sir William, 256, 289 

Thomson, James, on character of Lord 
Lyttleton, 59 
his description of Hagley Park, 292 

Thrale, Miss, 135 

Thrale, Mr, 75 

his importance and wealth, 120, 121 
described by Boswell, 121 
and by Mrs Thrale, 122, 125 
and by Dr Johnson, 123 
controls Johnson's outbursts, 123 
his Streatham Gallery, 123, 124 
his exclusion of Mrs Thrale from 

domestic affairs, 125, 322 
his entertainments, 127 
his death, 130 
his business failings, 130 

Thrale, Mrs (Mrs Piozzi), her vivacity, 9 
in Herald verses, 11 
her place in Female Administra- 
tion, 12 
called " Hebe," 13 
on Mrs Montagu's knowledge, 41 
her description of Mrs Montagu, 

55 
her use of rouge, 67 
on Lady Sarah Bunbury, 69 
her appearance and dress, 73, 

X18 
her force of personality, 117 



INDEX 



351 



Thrale, Mrs, her vivacity contrasted 1 
with Mrs Montagu's, ii8 
her sweetness of temper. 119 
her connection \\ith Johnson, 119, 

120 
her description of Thrale. 122 
refused share in domestic affairs, 

125 
her colloquial wit, 125 
her sentimental exaggeration, 126 
her book-knowledge, 126 
her entertainments, 127, 251 
her feeling for Johnson as Niewed 

by herself in retrospect, 128 
and as reported by contemporaries, 

129 
her business capacity, 130, 131 
her break with Johnson, 132 
her Anecdotes, 133 
the controversy they aroused, 134 
her marriage wixh Piozzi, 134, 136 
the opposition to it, 135-137 
her love the unforgivable feature, 

136 
her life after second marriage, 138 
after second widowhood, 139 
her writings, 139, 140 
her gaiety, 141 
her lines to Piozzi, 141 
her ban on card-playing, 148 
her function as hostess, 149 
painted by Sir Joshua, 213 
her relations with Hogarth, 214, 

215 
in Rowlandson s cancature, 217 
on Fanny Burney's oversensitive- 

ness, 235 
her gardens and garden-image, 

294. 295 
Thraliana, 25, 122 
Tracts, Cheap Repository', Hannah 

More's, 299, 308, 311 
Trimmer, Mrs, 311, 333 

Vauxhall, 217, 288 

Vesey, Mr, 75, 163, 169, 170, 171, 172, 

175 
Vesey, Mrs, her " sylphery," 9, 13 

invention of term " Blue-Stocking " 

ascribed to her, 22 
Bas Bleu dedicated to her, 64 
her appearance and dress, 70 
her ban on card-playing, 148 
her function as hostess, 149 
influence of landscape upon, 157 
her correspondence, 158 
her character, 159 



Vesey, Mrs, her friends, 159, 160 
her idealistic temperament, 164 
her restlessness, 164 
her unpracticality, 165 
her "oddities," 166 
her childishness, 167 
her letters to Mrs Carter, 168 
her pursviit of pleasure, 169 
her birth and marriages, 169 
Mr Vesey's neglect of her, 170, 171 
characteristics of her parties, 174 
her magic of personality, 175 
her grief at Vesey's death, 176 
her failing faculties, 176 
her disintegration of the " Circle," 

181 
her gifts described in Bas Bleu, 185 
and elsewhere, 185 
her religious doubts, 277 

Village Politics, Hannah More's, 308 

Voltaire, 40, 42, 43, 45, no 



Walpole, Horace, his strictures on 

gaming, 3 
his opinion of Hannah More, 10 
his play upon the word Bliu-Stock- 

i?ig, 24, 25 
his appreciation of Montagu 

House, 53 
description of Mrs Montagu's 

breakfast-parties, 56 
resentment against Johnson, 61 
on use of cold water, 68 
enacts Horace in Bas Bleu, 76, jj 
his Anecdotes of Painting and Mrs 

Delany, 80 
his description of Bulstrode, 100 
Madame du Defifand's affection for 

him, 113, 114 
his appearance, 114 
his criticism of Mrs Piozzi's 

Anecdotes, 133 
calls her Mrs Frail Piozzi, 137 
his tribute to Mrs Vesey, 160 
on Mrs Vesey's parties, 175, 186 
his power of soothing Mrs Vesey, 

177 
his criticism of Barry's "The 

Society," 220 
his appreciation of Fanny Burney, 

226 
his perception of her falling-ofF, 234 
his hour of dinner, 249 
his scorn of the Batheaston 

"Parnassus," 258 
on landscape gardening, 288 



352 FAMOUS BLUE-STOCKINGS 



Walpole, Horace, his opinion of The 
Bota7iic Garden^ 289 
his friendship with Hannah More, 

304, 305 
his name for Mary WoUstonecraft, 

335 
Walsingham, Mrs (Blue -Stocking 

hostess), loi, 255 
Wanderer^ The, Fanny Burney's, 243 
Wesley, John, his religious views, 6 
his correspondence with Mrs 

Delany, 90 
West, Gilbert, his letters to Mrs 

Montagu, 40 



West, Gilbert, influence of landscape 

upon, 157 
Whitfield, 6 

Wilberforce, William, 309 
Williams, Mrs, 58, 193 
Winchester, Dean of, 192 
Witlings The, Fanny Burney's, 19 
WoUstonecraft, Mary, 283, 335 
Wraxall, Nathaniel, 115, 254 



Young, Dr, Letter on Original Com- 
position, 39 
influence of landscape upon, 157 



708 



TURNJBU^L AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 



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